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Title: The next corner
Author: Kate Jordan
Illustrator: Wilson V. Chambers
Release date: November 3, 2026 [eBook #79913]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1921
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79913
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NEXT CORNER ***
[Frontispiece: A second self seemed to come to her; a self of wisdom,
advising, helping her. FRONTISPIECE. _See page_ 285.]
THE NEXT CORNER
BY
KATE JORDAN
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
WILSON V. CHAMBERS
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1921
_Copyright, 1921,_
BY KATE JORDAN VERMILYE.
_All rights reserved_
Published January, 1921
Reprinted January, 1921
By Kate Jordan
THE CREEPING TIDES
TIME THE COMEDIAN
AGAINST THE WINDS
THE NEXT CORNER
"_Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;
...... But Thou, oh Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!_"
THE NEXT CORNER
CHAPTER I
PARIS. A June morning with the freshness and sweetness of the wet,
inner leaves of a young rose. Clocks had just finished striking six.
In a room on an _entresol_ that overlooked the uphill Rue de Chaillot
a young woman lay asleep. A pencil of the sun had wavered in through
the drawn _persiennes_, had reached her and was rising by almost
invisible progress over the rose-colored covering to her face. After
flickering across a bare shoulder that had slipped from a gown as
sheer as a veil, and touching a cheek where wisps of whitish-blond
hair clung, it gave a stab at the closed lids whose fringes lay on
her pallor like the wings of brown moths.
At its touch they flew open. And they stayed open. This was not a
drowsy awakening. The wild look about the room was a net that caught
up details.
The place had the Gallic mixture of heaviness and caprice to which
were added notes that told of an alien occupant. Mirrors were set
wherever a mirror could be. Antiquated, damask draperies around the
bulging bed had been tightly roped back for a free passage of air
through the wide-open windows. The cumbersome armoires were so
packed that ends of lacy and silken skirts kept them from closing;
American slippers lay sideways with a coil of pale silk stockings
just as they had been flung off; a mass of gardenias had died among a
trail of silver ribbon on the bureau top in the company of brushes,
rouge pots and perfume bottles; midway on the floor there was a
telegram beside its jaggedly torn envelope; on a _chaise longue_ a
gown of smoky green tulle sprawled in the semblance of a body in
despair.
It was on the tulle gown that Elsie's gaze fixed itself. She
remembered what a recklessly happy heart it had covered all through
the night of mad frivolity, and with what shaking hands--after
reading the telegram--she had managed to unhook it only a few hours
before. In its grotesque humanness it suddenly seemed to be herself,
stretched over there in abandoned grief.
Her arm shot up to her eyes and for a few seconds stayed rigid, her
teeth sunk into her underlip.
"Oh, well!" came from her with smothered desperation. She squirmed
from the bedclothes and went to the window.
On her journey across the big room she picked up the telegram. When
she had opened the _persiennes_ a little, she spread out the paper to
read again the words she knew by heart:
"Instead of going on with Cranston I am already on my way to France
to pick you up there. Bully that we can, after all, go home
together. I won't be able to get to you before Friday evening. By
going on the night train to Havre we can get Saturday's ship, which I
think is scheduled to start early. Feeling tiptop, and hope you are.
Looking forward with much happiness to seeing you
"ROBERT."
She went over this twice and standing there, dreaming, the light on
her face, she visualized the future she was returning to by the past
from which, nearly three years before, she had escaped.
The picture of her childhood was a muddled thing, like a spoiled wash
drawing where people were ghosts. Of her father, who had died when
she was a baby, she had no memory at all. She had grown up, the only
child of Nina Race. This persistently young and gifted mother was a
celebrated concert singer who traveled much and over great distances,
taking Elsie with her sometimes, more often leaving her behind with a
hueless sort of elderly aunt as guardian.
But whether she went, dazzled and fatigued, with her mother, or
stayed with Aunt Esther who could not be weaned from the whaleboned
basques of the seventies and who sucked lemon drops while through the
whole year she crocheted the things meant for Christmas gifts, her
life was spent in hotels; second-class ones with Aunt Esther, the
best when with the successful singer.
An hotel child. She had come to see that there was nothing on God's
earth more unfitting and unfair. Eating, one of a crowd. Studying
her lessons with the voices of strangers beating on the thin doors
between bedrooms. Not only forbidden to play in the halls that had
the invitation of emptiness and expanse; always told to speak even
more quietly there. "Hush!"--Oh, what a shackling word that had been
all through the forming years, when her spirit was cramped in
constantly changing rooms that always bore a dreary resemblance to
each other; and where crowds looked at her only to pass her over.
She saw other children in shops and streets and carriages, held to
their mothers and kissed when they cried; petted and kissed with
delight when they capered and laughed. No one kissed away her tears.
Her passionate heart, that cried for love as dry lips crave water,
that needed an idol on which to expend its glowing worship, was not
of interest to any one except as an organ to beat normally with
health. Cats and dogs, and dolls grown frayed from the endearments
of her craving hands were all she had as solace, and these only at
times, because of the shifting hotel life where so often pets were
forbidden and dolls were mislaid or left behind.
Perhaps when she went with her mother to strange cities it was a
little more trying, especially after she was sixteen. Nina,
chronically juvenile in type, lovely, gay, good-humored, was a magnet
to crowds of friends, with several men always on the edge of asking
her to marry them, or about to take to drink because she would not.
And then would come Nina's daughter like a fist-blow statistic of
Nina's age,--a serious girl, thin as a wand and with big, gray eyes,
who seemed sullen, she said so little; a guest who didn't "mix," and
whose entrance sent all the naughty sparkle out of Nina's parties.
The sense of misrelation to her environment had become an agony to
Elsie when at last a friend of Nina's, met during a tour of the
mining towns of the Northwest, had found her worth drawing from her
dumb shyness and trying to know. As a result she had responded to
Robert Maury with an enthusiasm that had seemed to him and to herself
to be awakened love but that really had been the gratitude of the
rescued. Almost at once, mostly because it suited her mother's plans
which were about to take her through South America, she had married
Robert.
He was of Scotch-Irish descent, thirty-seven now--and had always
looked less than his years--of good height, spare and strong;
light-moving, impulsive in manner. His ruggedly cut face with steady
blue eyes, his bony jaw, his mouth, elastic and whimsical in humor
and like granite in decision, had been an honest declaration of his
nature as she had come to know it. He was a fair dealer; practical
without hardness; quick to feel affection and reticent in expression
of it; of even and healthy passions that could be quenched as summer
tempests and instantly forgotten under the control of the mind; and
yet with a substratum of Celtic mysticism which could fill him at
moments with an ecstasy of vision of which he rarely spoke. A man
who had the curb upon every phase of himself, his own master hardily
and hers very gently.
Robert was a mining engineer with little money and large prospects
when, at nineteen, she had become his wife. And for nearly four
years she had lived with him in forlorn mining settlements in the
northwestern part of the States and Canada,--an experience as lacking
to her in color and the thrill of life as if she had been pent up in
a lighthouse.
During it she had borne a child; had loved it with all the fierce,
imaginative passion that was in her and that her husband had never
touched; had seen it grow into a lovely toddler; had seen it sicken;
had battled for its life with a fairly blasphemous resistance against
the Power that could take it from her; had watched it die.
There had been a terrible year after that, when she had felt herself
a gray figure moving through the fogs of melancholia, seeing always
that little child change from loving-eyed, warm, breathing flesh
against her heart to a sculptured thing with sunk-in lashes on marble
cheeks and tiny lips of steel.
And then a path had shown through the fog. Robert, very successful
now, had been selected by an English mining syndicate as one of
several men to report on mines in Burmah. It was not an expedition
to include women, least of all such a ghost of a woman as she was
then, so he had left it to her to select where, with an attendant
nurse, she would live during his long absence.
Her mother was in Russia at the time, and Aunt Esther had returned to
her native Vermont village. She brushed out both and with the
freakish impulse of the sick had selected Paris, for no reason except
a recurrence of its name in her thoughts after reading George Moore's
"Confessions of A Young Man." It had been a whisper at first, then a
tug and a demand.
Elsie took some listless steps to the mirror above the bureau and
studied herself. For nearly three years this glass had reflected her
face. Now that she was questioning it almost for the last time--for
this was to be her last day in Paris--she seemed to see many ghosts
of herself there, as she had been in the beginning and through the
quickening experiences that had gone to the making of the woman of
twenty-six that she was on this last morning.
How raw she had been at first; and drunk, innocently drunk, with the
joy of every simple day, crowded with new things!
Health had come quickly and the nurse had been dismissed. Quickly,
too, she had made friends. Not always the right or best sort of
friends, she well knew. At first she had tried to keep her values
clear and only come close to men and women that she felt her husband
would have thought fit for her friendship. Soon, pliably, she had
come not to care what others were, providing they were amusing. "Not
to be bored" was the slogan of the cosmopolitan crowd who from
various eddies had floated to the part of the Paris stream that
whirled her along.
She had not been wholly without purpose. Her voice, an attenuated
sort of inheritance from her mother, had been trained fitfully. It
was not a serious ambition with her, and it had no market value.
Truthful to herself, she knew that after her arid childhood and the
monotone of her marriage she had been for these three years in Paris
a nervous devourer of life,--large slices of it, with many sorts of
sauce upon them. With greed and fever she had eaten them honestly,
in the sight of all. Too honestly. Few believed that her
indiscretions were of the surface, that the high flavors had only
touched her mental palate without as yet taking any healthy property
from the blood current.
Still while she was different from the married women she knew, most
of whom had lovers and several a cynically easy succession of them,
she was not quite on the other side of the line. Not as she had
been. Not now. Not to-day. The feeling that one has been close to
the commission of a wrong act can have much of the body of the
accomplished fault. So the telegram that she had found waiting for
her when she had come in close to dawn, tossed, warm, with a man's
first kisses burning on her mouth, and that had fallen from her weak
fingers, had been like her husband's hand fastening upon her shoulder.
Now she flung it among the cosmetic and perfume bottles. There was a
desperate tilt to her head, a quiver to her nostrils,--the look of a
last hope in a fight.
"If I don't go back? If I refuse?" she thought. "Other women have
burned the boats behind them. Were they always sorry,
afterward--always? If I--oh, if I--take daringly what I love, what I
crave--?"
She lifted the gardenias. They were almost brown and without scent
except for a curious cigarette odor still held in the trail of
ribbon; this was unlike any of the several sorts of tobacco popular
in Paris; this was Spanish,--a pungent, enduring, woody flavor, that
recalled only one man Elsie knew, and she drew it in with longing,
her eyes shut. As she buried her face among the flowers she was
sorry that in the excitement of reading the telegram she had left
them to die. They had been so like stars of white velvet last night.
And in their death they seemed also to be that night, mad and sweet
but lost,--one that never could be again.
She was leaving Paris. She was going to-night. To-night.
Her hands were very small and had a way of trembling when she was
agitated. They trembled now as her fingers moved among the limp
stems. She kissed them. A name left her lips, faintly at first,
then with a raging sadness that shook her. It was not her husband's
name.
CHAPTER II
Several hours hung on Elsie's hands before the machinery of the day
would be set going. Her apartment, though in an exclusive part of
Paris with the great Arc towering on its rise close by, and a
high-priced one because of its situation, was very small, without a
room for a resident maid. Julie, her _femme de ménage_, would not
appear until half-past eight; and it would be another twenty minutes
after that before the fragrance of coffee would come as the genial
herald of the day's start.
The prospect was not to be borne peacefully. Elsie's nerves were so
responsive to her imagination they easily became a fine torture to
her. Besides, she did not mean to waste even one moment of this last
day in the city that had wound its fibers about her heart.
Still in her nightgown, she sped to the brick-paved kitchen where
copper bowls and pans sparkled on the walls with the effect of
ornaments, and started the coffee to percolate. While that was in
progress she bathed and dressed for the street, putting on a pink
muslin that sent a rosiness over the silver-gold hair, and a Leghorn
hat whose brim slashed her eyes with shadow.
She was sitting with her elbows on the kitchen table, drinking the
coffee listlessly when Julie arrived laden with fresh _croissants_,
fresh butter, a sheaf of purple iris from the market outside the
Madeleine and the morning letters. Her eyes over the flowers became
rigid black spots at sight of Elsie.
"Madame?" she shrilled. "I did not imagine you would open your eyes
for hours. Is it that something's wrong?"
Julie had a deep love for her young mistress who was talkative and
happy over every small attention and never found fault. She
sympathized with her, too, in a manner that was fairly that of a
fighter, at having to live alone "as if--_voilá!_--she were already a
widow!" And she had the Gallic suspicion of a husband who could so
settle himself apart from his wife. It was no wonder that a woman as
lovely and _séduisante_ as her young madame should have men
fluttering about her as bees after honey. What would you? It was
but natural! Any husband might have expected this situation, she
thought. And if he lost his wife--this absent American whom she had
never seen--he would have only himself to blame.
"Serve him right!" she would conclude, her small teeth shut, and in
the thought felt herself a champion of all women against all men, her
own husband prominently included.
Elsie decided to spare the good creature the grief that knowledge of
her departure would bring, until she came back, when it would also be
time to notify the Austrian countess who had let the furnished
apartment to her and begin the complicated packing.
Lightsome, tender and delicious she looked to Julie's adoring
eyes--like a big flower of gold and whitish-pink against the
flashing, copper-lined walls--until she saw her face fully, marked
its dead pallor under the big hat.
"It's such a glorious morning," Elsie said, sadness through one of
her softly whimsical smiles. "I grew energetic--thought I'd go for
an early walk."
She took the letters in one hand, a last morsel of _croissant_ in the
other, and started for the door when Julie's face, openly troubled,
drew her back. "_Qu'est-ce qu'il y a, Julie? Pourquoi tu me
regardes comme ça?_" she asked kindly.
"Something has happened--something _triste_," said the woman, hands
on hips, head nodding. "I know that look in your eyes, madame--as if
you saw down into a grave!"
Elsie could not keep back a light rush of tears. She thrust her head
forward with a curving dart like a gull's on starting to soar and
laid her warm lips on Julie's cheek.
"You dear Julie," she said, her arm along the sturdy peasant
shoulders, "you have been the kindest woman! I don't know what I'd
have done without you. I'll--never forget you--" broke from her
sharply as she turned away.
"Madame?" This was muted, all dazed alarm. "It is not that--not
that you are going to leave me?"
Elsie had gone. On the street the glow and freshness took her
breath. The morning was an etherialized pearl. As her head sank
back, swimming with sense of the beauty about her, regret twisted
more deeply into her. Oh, she did not want to leave Paris! Why must
it be? Oh, why--oh, why?
Cool and careful loving was never possible to her. Whatever she took
into her heart she cherished with fire and depth. Her feeling for
this city, that from the first day had gladdened her, had exaltation
in it. She could understand a Frenchwoman dying to save it; killing
to save it. Herself, this morning, would have taken it in her arms
if she could--its sculptured loveliness, blue-gray haze, leafy
perspectives, fragrance and charm--all that made it Paris.
The sweep of the Champs Elysées between the full-blossomed chestnuts
showed only a few early work people, motors with long distances
between, and a trio of horsemen on their way to the Bois for
breakfast. Elsie gave each of the riders a scrutinizing glance
before making her way to the mustard-colored metal seats under the
trees, and from which one of the aged women who had them in charge
was wiping the night dew.
It was as a sort of farewell ceremony that she gave the caretaker the
change from the two-franc piece with which she paid for a chair and
looked tenderly into the half-blind eyes that flickered at her in
delighted surprise while the voice said fumblingly: "_Je vous
remercie, mademoiselle!_" This sight of lonely old age on the
youthful morning kept her thoughts on their minor key as she sorted
her letters.
There was only one that tempted her to an immediate reading. This
was from her mother. And by experience Elsie knew that any sort of
surprise might spring at her with the opening of the envelope. One
received seven months earlier had told her of the death of Nina's
voice from diphtheria; and another, following shortly after, had set
forth in detail how, having lost her career and its large income, she
had married Percy Vining, fourteen years younger than herself, who
owned a millinery shop on Fifth Avenue. That this one held something
exciting was evident at the first glance. It was in Nina's most
dislocated manner, a thing of dashes and underscorings and
exclamations:
"Elsie," it began, "I can't tell you how you are maddening and
disappointing me! After _all_ I said to you when I was in Paris--not
a year ago--you seem to have kept on, until you have made a _fool_ of
yourself about Don Arturo! I enclose you the anonymous letter that
I've just received, so you can see I am not _imagining_ things. Of
course it's from some _cat_ of a woman who is probably crazy herself
about that adorable Spaniard--for you see how _just_ I am? No one
admits more than I do all his good looks and fairly _uncanny_
fascination. All I asked--and still ask--is that while I can't blame
you for having Don Arturo hanging about--don't take him _seriously_.
My dear, you are so impulsive! In spite of that cynical pose that
the Paris game has taught you, it's my belief that you could be an
_awful fool_ and make some blunder that would bring life down on you
in a smash-up!
"But I keep hoping that while it may be true that wherever you go Don
Arturo is at your heels, you won't do anything to make Robert divorce
you. If you do--you'll be _ruined_. For Arturo would never marry
you. I know this. Traveling all over this world as I've done, I've
got a line on all sorts of men. Among them I understand Spaniards of
Don Arturo's class--and _they are not like anything else on earth_.
I lived a year in Madrid, you know, and the sort of _pride you meet
among the grandees makes all the other prides_ in the world look like
tin whistles beside a full string orchestra. Now your Don Arturo
Valda y Moncado, Marqués de Burgos, is a grandee of the first class.
You don't get at his pride on the outside because after two years at
Oxford and living practically ever since in Paris, he has sense
enough to mask it. But if you could meet his family--that mother and
sister of his who haven't traveled at all--one glance would show you
what short work they'd make of your hopes of marriage with him. I
don't believe they'd expect you to _sit down in their presence_
unless they told you you could. And you wouldn't laugh at them
either. This pride is so fixed, so old, it's solemn--sort of
terrifying.
"I'll bet you're thinking that I'm such a fool for having married
Percy and his little hat shop, you're giving one of your cool,
shadowy smiles at all this advice. (Oh, I can see that short upper
lip go up!) But, just the same _I know my business_. While Percy is
thirty and I am--well, I'd die before I'd _put it on paper!_--he
looks older. Also, he makes me laugh. Also he doesn't fuss because
I don't stick to _one color_ hair. In fact, my Perce doesn't
_expect_ anything of anybody--and so he never gets left! Then, too,
he has a snug little business. And best of all he's a Roman Catholic
and I married him in his church--so he'll never get away from me
through any easy divorce. From all this, don't you see how sensibly
I've attended to _my_ future? My dear, _I could bite a tack through
with my wisdom teeth_, although people think me just a pretty fool.
"I was so glad to get Robert's short letter saying he was coming back
within the month, though he could not go on to Paris for you. Now I
suggest--I even _beseech_ you, Elsie--to come now and be here ahead
of him, to greet him. Cable me, and I'll get rooms reserved at my
hotel.
"A last word! If you should do anything rash in regard to Don Arturo
that queers you with Robert, _don't look for assistance from me_. As
far as money goes I haven't a cent left after my insane speculations,
and Percy's business only nets us an income on which we manage to
live. Besides, sweet as the dear boy is, he would not tolerate my
taking you in with us. Couldn't stand the _father_ stunt--too
_bridegroomy_!
"For years, while Robert was a poor man, you lived with him in those
awful western holes and made him happy. So _don't lose him now_
when, as he tells me, he has made _a pile of money_ and is one of the
directors of the Burmah company. Robert's rich. And Arturo, like so
many of Spain's grandees, is deadly poor. That confidential man of
his--Serafin, isn't it?--told me as if it were the most natural
thing, that Arturo's sister and mother live in a secret sort of
poverty in just a wing of the old _casa señorial_ at Burgos so they
can scrape enough together to support him as a gentleman in Paris.
The idea of Arturo's _working_ would be like sacrilege to all of
them. They'd faint at the suggestion!
"Now I've warned you, Elsie. Don't be a fool! Come home and be
ready for your husband.
"Your little Muv--who loves her baby."
Elsie read this with breathless interest until she reached the advice
tendered to the wife of a rich man in love with a poor one. At this
the cool smile spoken of in the letter had raised her mutinous lip,
as it had so often in past years when at some break in her mother's
mask she had had a peep behind it. In the closing paragraphs lay the
whole meaning of this violent persuasion. It was propaganda in the
cause of dollars and ease. Reduced to an essence it could have read:
"Now that your husband has wealth keep in with him, making him
believe you love him, though you may not. The other man has no
money."
And this was the conclusion she had, through the undercurrent of her
thought, been coming to ever since she read her husband's telegram.
Not because he was rich and Arturo poor, but because she was--herself.
She had no exact knowledge of all the phases of her nature, but of
one thing she had always been aware,--her lack of initiative. This
was as plain to her as the shape of her useless little hands. The
new and perplexing she had met easily and with success, because there
had been always the consciousness of some one as a wall back of her,
a brace, a shelter. In childhood, though she had been perishing for
affection, her safeguards had been her mother and Aunt Esther.
Afterward there had been Robert,--he, most of all. And though
thousands of miles from her for years, he yet remained her sureness
and her strength. Nothing could ever seriously harm her while he
found her precious.
Arturo? Ah, that was different altogether. With the question there
struggled up from some deep cave in her spirit a reckless magnetism
toward love with him along strange paths. And yet the desire, now as
always, coiled on itself, much as one who, though knowing how to
swim, has a panic on venturing into water beyond his depth and
strikes home to the shallows where the feet, when they choose, can
feel the safe sands under them.
There was never clear sight of any goal with this lover who had
taught her the meaning of passion's intoxication. All the paths with
him were veiled, just as back of his bitterly adoring gaze there was
always something she could not read; something that belonged to
traditions in him unintelligible to her and that in a vague way he
gave the impression of living up to immutably.
No, there was nothing of surety with her lover. And she was afraid
of any venturesome step that might lead some day to dangerous places
where alone she would have to face life in the raw, fight it with
bare hands. The wrong sort of training had turned her out a runaway
from results. This knowledge made her despise herself. But it was
there. It had to be faced.
Lost in her thoughts, she had kept folding the letter over and over,
finality in her downward look, and did not see the rider who at sight
of her pulled up his horse, then came on close to the pavement at a
walk. His shadow was upon her before she raised her eyes and saw the
face that went with her in her dreams.
CHAPTER III
Don Arturo slipped to the ground and with his free hand lifted one of
hers to his lips.
"Good morning," he said, adding very softly, "my own, and my very
dearest?"
Elsie left her hand in his. That it was cold and quivered sent the
glow of the master over him. He held it a moment, then as passers-by
were becoming more frequent, dropped it and assumed a casual air. He
knew how to talk to a woman so that she could read his devotion while
to the closest watcher he would seem but casually attentive.
"I came in a roundabout way to ride past your house, thinking you'd
be fast asleep," Arturo said very boyishly. "I never dreamed of
seeing you out so early after getting home so late. Maybe you were
like me?--too happy to sleep?" He asked the question with a look of
the most intense love. His voice was languid, the tone rich; his
English, with the faintly emphasized exactness of the foreigner, that
of the Oxford man. "Tell me, Elsie, was it so?"
"I slept for a few hours. I woke up early."
"That is the way with love. It wants us to be awake in the beautiful
world that it makes for us. Ah--and isn't it beautiful?"
It was hard to have to tell him in this public place what it was that
had driven her out. Back of her soft lips her teeth were set. She
was recording every detail about him to be remembered when she was
far from him in a different world,--and divided forever.
He was twenty-nine. An air of ingenuousness would disclose the boy
in him. Sometimes the marks of emotional experience--of a silken
depravity--peeped out and made him seem in the thirties. His gaze,
with the Spaniard's meditative sadness in repose, was often listless
or petulant. Though his riding clothes were very plain, showed signs
of use and were worn with carelessness, the warm grace of the south
that gives just a shade of effeminacy hung about him. His eyes were
pure black, unmuddied by the faintest brown, sparkling like cut jet
through a dreaming glow. His lightly-mustached lips were sensitively
curved, with deep descending corners and with a smile that showed
dazzling teeth and a mouth as fresh as a child's. This smile came
rarely through his soft-lying gravity; when it did, it rose slowly to
rest in his eyes and deepen there musingly to the audacious saying of
things he would not dare put into words.
His Antinous-like beauty had two blurring notes; a look of cruelty as
cold as steel that often moved over the lips, flattening them,--a
look sometimes seen even on the faces of beautiful Spanish women when
watching the blood-spilling of a bullfight; and a thickness to the
neck that went sharply into shoulders too broad for his lithe body
that was but little above middle height. These blemishes gave to his
idyllic symmetry a look of sensual aggression and strength that but
heightened his attractiveness to women.
He radiated happiness as he went on brightly: "I'm breakfasting with
some men at Pré Catalan--my cousins. They leave Paris to-night. I'd
have forgotten the matter altogether if Serafin had not reminded me.
They would have been mortally insulted if I'd failed to appear--we
Spaniards are so childishly oversensitive about the _politesse_ of
life. Yes, if the engagement had been with any one else, I'd have
stayed in my bed--" His voice sank, his sultry eyes met hers with a
message that had the effect upon her of a passionate caress, and
words followed, all rushed and huddled together, "--in my dark
room--dreaming there of you, in the darkness. Darling, darling--of
those last moments with you!"
She drank in the words. Perhaps in this brief meeting on the Paris
thoroughfare she was hearing his voice for the last time. It seemed
an uncanny, impossible, even a wrong thing to imagine; and yet there
it was, just ahead, waiting, sure.
"What is the matter?" he asked suddenly, and from the misgiving in
his quickly widened gaze she saw he had put his own interpretation
upon her silence. "What's become of all your brightness? It's
strange not to see you fluttering and jesting and laughing. But I
understand. You are regretting--!"
The impatient words stopped when Elsie's hands went up and down in a
denial of singular hopelessness. "I was going to send for you--to
tell you something, Arturo. But seeing you now, I'll tell you--"
"I do not want to hear it," broke from him coldly. He straightened
beside the horse. "I know what you'll say. Haven't I listened to
you for a year, during which I might eat out my heart and show it to
you, tortured, getting your attention--oh, yes, and even your
invitation, _por Dios!_--yet never, until last night, permitted more
than a kiss upon your hand! I'm tired of that, Elsie. I won't have
it any more. You've got to stop taking one step forward and another
back. You are as full of wretched love for me as I am for you. Your
lips told me that last night. Last night I found you. I shall keep
you. I intend to fill my life with your love!"
His ivory pallor had grayed with anger; he was dangerous in manner.
Often he had looked at her this way,--as if his devotion were close
neighbor to hatred; as if, since he could not conquer her, he wished
to hurt her cruelly to satisfy the exasperated need that was
consuming him. And yet, as always, he managed to communicate to her
the appeal of one hungry, demanding bread.
"I won't be played with any longer. I'm a man to keep what is
mine--once I am sure that it _is_ mine."
When he would have mounted the horse she stood up and went close to
him. "You don't understand. Everything's changed," she said, a
joyless smile working over her mouth, "and probably a good thing
too--for me! When I got in last night--this morning--there was a
telegram from my husband--"
"Another?" he asked with curled lip and a look of insult. "He is a
man of telegrams! He is made of bits of paper!"
"Robert's coming for me." Her voice was faint, though she met his
stormy gaze steadily. "Coming to-night. I leave here with
him--to-night. We sail in the morning from Havre, for home." She
gave an unhappy laugh, a twitch to one shoulder, as she watched him.
"I won't annoy you any more, you see, Arturo! I won't torture you
any more! You ought to be glad!"
He looked away from her. Intense quiet went over him. His brows
came down, and he fingered the bit as if thinking only of its
arrangement.
"So--that's it?" he muttered and swung himself up to the horse's
back. "Very well," he shrugged.
Elsie remained looking up at him, feeling as if he had flicked her
face with his crop. She seemed thrust into distance.
"You're not going--without saying--" came from her with longing.
"Saying what?" he asked, his look dreary, enraged. "What is there to
be said?"
"Don't be childish, Arturo! Don't blame me for what I can't help,"
Elsie persisted. "We must part friends--oh, we must always be
friends!"
"Will you be at home this afternoon--at home to me?" he asked with
curt vehemence.
"I would, but Julie will be packing, and the woman who owns the
furniture will be there with her inventory--"
"Yes, that would be unfortunate," he replied, his suave tone
suggesting still deeper rage. "Well, then, there is the Countess
Longueval--her tea. Will you be there?"
"I'd forgotten that! Yes, Arturo, I'll manage surely--I'll go."
"That will have to do then." He sat up straight, musing for a few
seconds, then bent swiftly to her with a beseeching look. "I suppose
it will have to do. I don't suppose you would--or, would you?--lunch
with me somewhere, where we could be alone?" He swayed down closer
and gripped her shoulder in a storm of hope. "Come with me to-day,"
and the whisper had fire in it. "Will you? I know a place--! Will
you, Elsie? On this last day will you come with me, my darling?--Let
me kiss you, bid you good-by so? Oh, you owe me that for all my long
love and patience. Don't you? Will you come? Say yes, dear! Ah,
do say it!"
In the morning sunlight, in the bustling day, his words sent rapture
over her, mixed as it was with guilt and trouble. Steadying herself
against it, she turned from him.
"No. No."
"You won't?"
"No."
"You don't love me!" He pushed her off in a gentle way, yet with his
expressive fingers spread wide in the force of excommunication. "You
don't love me at all. I could die for you, and you care nothing for
me, nothing. I don't believe," he said with a sneer, "it's in you to
love any man. You're a spirit--without senses."
"I hope you are right!" she cried, her gray eyes alight and fixed
steadily on him. "Better for me if that's true!"
Don Arturo sat quite still and stared ahead. When he spoke again his
voice was thick and had pain in it. "Remember this," he said,
remaining upright, only his glance upon her; "you have made me suffer
what I have never suffered for a woman before!"
He touched the horse, went from her at a rapid trot and without
looking back. Elsie watched him till in the perspective the opposing
lines of blossoms seemed to make an arch over him and then fall
behind him in a curtain.
Half an hour later he appeared the gayest of the group at breakfast.
While he loved Elsie with a stubborn fire, was savage and sick at the
thought of losing her, this did not shadow all moods nor interrupt
his enjoyment as a man with men; nor very soon prevent his
meaningless kisses from brushing the ear and the little finger of
Colette Le Nours, an eighteen-year-old dancer worshipped on the
boulevards, and who had left her table to join the young Spaniards
when they called to her in chorus.
She was markedly different from Elsie. She had a brightly painted,
gypsyish little face; a rasping contralto voice which poured out the
coarsest _argot_ of the Apaches in an artless way that sent her
audience into delighted screams; she also stuck out her tongue, or
put it in her cheek, or wriggled her thumb against her buttonlike
nose. She existed for Arturo for these rollicking, few moments;
Elsie for many and serious hours later. One had her place with him,
though more briefly, quite as much as the other.
They were still at the table and Colette had turned her back on the
rest for a duo with "_ce beau Arturo_," in which she was a most
businesslike pursuer and he a most urbane and smiling dodger, when
Serafin appeared, coming toward the group, the unhurried ease of the
Latin mixing with a pervading deference.
His place in Don Arturo's life was an involved and interesting one.
Though he received wages, he was privileged to a spurious sort of
intimacy with his employer--a situation recognized amiably by the
cousins present--his peasant mother of the mountains having supplied
the blue-blooded one with his first red-blooded nourishment. The
bond of affection between the Spanish _ama_ and her nursling is even
more lasting than that between the children of our own South and the
black mammy, and it can extend to her offspring if they are found
agreeable or of use. Serafin's usefulness was evident in the first
look.
It seemed impossible that almost to a day he was Arturo's age, for he
seemed forty,--very tall, angular, with a long, priestly face, bold
features and eyes with a Mongolian slant. They were arresting in
their queerness, those eyes,--so sunken that with their wrinkled lids
but slightly lowered his face seemed a saffron mask; when they were
open they showed as spots of fire in the bony hollows; their puckers
at the lifted, outer corners gave his look, even in repose, the
speculative shrewdness of a fox, so that he had earned this nickname
and was called by his intimates "_Zorro_" almost as often as Serafin.
Coming of Basque stock, of which the best business men in the
Peninsula are made, he had none of Don Arturo's poetic sensuality,
very little of his rooted weakness for women that could so unnerve
and distract his life. He was as practical in every instinct as a
Birmingham factory owner. To this quality of mind was added six
years of business experience in the stock markets of New York and
Chicago. His passion was the accumulation of money. At twenty he
had left the service of Don Arturo's family and gone to America after
it; there he had made what to his peasant eyes was a large fortune,
only to lose it almost at once through greed in speculation and had
become for a time a nervous wreck. Practically insolvent, venomously
disappointed, he had returned to the post still to be had with his
former master.
For three years now, though still an ailing man, he had been Don
Arturo's valet, secretary, courier; his right hand, eyesight,
cat's-paw, buffer or brain. He would have been his conscience and
heart, too, if required. But the former was a word he never heard
and would have puzzled much about, and the latter a province whose
affairs were so much to Don Arturo's liking that this able assistant
was never permitted more than a sentry's peep through the gate.
Removing his hat in a profound bow to all at the table, Serafin
bestowed a more intimate one upon Don Arturo while remaining a short
distance from his chair. "If I might speak to you, _Señor Marqués_?"
he asked, some significant thing most delicately conveyed in the tone.
Arturo rose, and with excuses to his cousins, as polite as if they
were all strangers at a formal meeting, moved off with his man,
turning almost immediately out of sight around a thickly hedged path.
"You will be interested in this, _señor_," Serafin said alertly, and
taking a folded newspaper from his pocket, he shook it out. His
quiet eyes had their fox look marked as he laid the fanged nail of a
bony and tobacco-brown finger on one paragraph. "_Mira_! You did
not know, _señor_?"
Arturo read the few lines in the _Paris Herald_ stating that Robert
Maury of the Ludgate and Burmah Mining Corporation had been announced
by telegraph as a passenger on the _Paul Lecat_ from Singapore that
had docked at Marseilles two days before. He was due in Paris at an
early date.
Colette Le Nours and every phase of the life she represented vanished
from Arturo's thoughts as if she had not existed. A blade seemed to
twist through his heart. Open desolation in his eyes, he fixed them
upon Serafin.
"I already know about this," he said lifelessly. "As I rode here I
ran across Mrs. Maury, and she told me."
"Ah, _si_?" Serafin folded the newspaper again.
Arturo sat down on one of the benches against the privet hedge and
sank into thought. He looked past Serafin for a full moment and then
began to talk in a carefully quiet tone and rapidly, his eyes fixed
ahead, only his lips moving to the patting rise and fall of one hand
against his arm. Serafin was listening as immovably. He was
receiving exact directions, and his replies were the brief ones of
the intelligent agent who reduces himself to a pair of ears.
They spoke in Spanish, Arturo in the lisping Castilian of the
Madrileno, Serafin with a more robust utterance,--that of the Basque
country mixed with a few Cuban and South American individualisms
picked up in his travels. The name of Mrs. Sidney Vrain and the
Countess Longueval occurred frequently, to which Serafin would nod
with an alert: "_Si--si,--señor--si_."
Arturo stood up at length. He gave a brief, sharp shrug, his
expression dull. "It will be quite useless, probably. Only the
smallest sort of a chance that she will help me in this." He went
down the path to the restaurant, adding over his shoulder, "I'll get
away from here in a few moments and go home. You go to Mrs. Vrain's
at once. She'll be just about rising, I imagine. Tell her not to
fail me. At four I'll expect her at the Longuevals'--for a talk at
the end of the corridor, upstairs--she knows."
Serafin assured him of obedience, saluted and departed.
CHAPTER IV
The home of the Countess Longueval was one of the loveliest of the
ancient dwellings in the Faubourg St. Germain. Elsie was glad that
she was to see it once more. As she made ready for the tea she
imagined herself in its garden, a place so quiet it seemed to be a
part of the deep country instead of a high-walled patch on a Paris
street. She saw its balconies set with tea tables, the crinkled
blinds of buttercup color drawn high on the open windows so that they
were as doors through which the guests passed; she saw the footmen in
the Longueval buff and silver and the bushes of forsythia, twinkling,
golden, making effective screens for an occasional bench placed back
of them in _tête-à-tête_ seclusion.
The flare of yellow in this mind picture made her decide to wear that
color on this last day. Then, too, it was one that Arturo thought
charming for her. She recalled his words a few months previous at a
dance when she had worn a cloud of lemon-colored tulle with beaten
gold hoops in her ears and a flash of the same from her girdle.
"This color brings out the yellow lights that always lurk in
gray-hazel eyes. I wish you'd wear it often, Elsie. When your eyes
are the pure gray your heart is very cold and careful. They say
pleasanter things to me--when they are gold."
And with this effect before her she began to make up her face,--for
Elsie was _tout-à-fait Parisienne_ in the frank use of cosmetics. It
did not in the least matter that as turned out by nature she was a
delicately lovely type, with deep brown lashes a silken fringe around
unshadowed eyes, and lips of coral pink. From the viewpoint of her
whim-following world a certain decadent effect that could be gained
only by artifice was far more alluring than any ungarnished
attractiveness. This was smeared on real beauty as a glove is put
upon the hand.
So Elsie sat before her mirror with pots, pencils and brushes. She
began by covering her skin with a white cream and smoothing it down
with powder. Melted black pigment stiffened her lashes into borders
of delicately individualized wires and wiped out their natural brown,
the most intriguing touch following in the laying on of bluish
shadows on the lids so that the eyes looked from them lengthened and
languid. Rouge made the lobes of the small ears blaze, and scarlet
paste used freely on the mouth had a flaunting invitation. When with
patience and care Elsie had disordered her hair into what appeared
unstudied airiness, the work was done; and ethereal as this hair
truly was--a pale jonquil hue that seemed dusted with white--it
deepened by contrast the laid-on worldliness that it framed.
She was satisfied. She had become used to this changed face with
geranium-red mouth and drugged looking eyes burning against its
deathly pallor. She was now of an accepted type. She was like all
her friends.
Still, as Julie, with lids like fresh burns from weeping at the
prospect of parting from her, pinned a veil so that it lay like a
film scarcely lower than her brooding gaze, a speculation quivered
through the calm of habit, a touch of drollery pulled at the garish
mouth.
"Robert won't like me--that's sure. He may even ask me to wash my
face!" There was amused patronage in the conclusion: "He won't
understand."
Earlier arrivals than Elsie had reached the Longueval house. Among
the first comers was Mrs. Sidney Vrain. After a casual greeting to
her small, dark-eyed hostess who flashed like a jeweler's window and
whose whitened face had the impudent prettiness of a marmoset, she
sailed on her way as one well used to the place, and at the top of
the first stairway reached a corner partitioned off by ancient
tapestries. It was a spot arranged as a lounge. Liquors and seltzer
were on a ledge against the wall. There were several small smoking
tables, armchairs and a divan as wide as a bed.
The place was empty. She had expected this. The Marqués de Burgos
had a genius these days for making her expect him and then, with
graceful apologies, arriving when he pleased. Mrs. Vrain pulled off
one yard-long, flesh-colored glove of such thin suede she gave the
effect of peeling the skin from elbow to hand, mixed herself a brandy
and soda, drained it without pause, tossed the pillows to a desired
angle and with a cigarette taken from her own gold case--as large as
one of the Tauchnitz novels beside which she laid it--threw herself
upon them. She smoked thoughtfully, an ill-humored gaze fixed on the
turn of the stairs.
Those familiar with her would scarcely have known that she was
annoyed in any special way, for she was a chronically discontented
being and showed it. Her walk was always the most indifferent
slouch. She would step from a motor and let the fish tail of a tulle
gown crawl over yards of wet pavement or the dirt of theater lobbies
with no more concern than if it were a dishcloth; she always flung
things from her as if they were of no account,--her gold chatelaine
bag to her maid, or tips to waiters, or her furs to her footman.
They were all treated with the soured sort of sullenness that was
poisoning her.
She felt she had much to complain of. She was forty-four. As if
that were not bad enough, she looked it. Her big body, in youth that
of a powerful, lightly-fleshed goddess, had grown fat with the
blowsiness of the overfed and sensuously inactive; a harsh redness
was spread over her skin; and veins that no beauty doctor could rub
out showed through layers of powder over the puffy cheeks and
thickened nose. There was of course the way of self-denial that
after prolonged marches could have helped her back to much of the
lost comeliness. That was not a path with any invitation for Paula
Vrain. As her own words set forth:
"To cut out all the delicious alcohol pick-me-ups, and the sweets and
the sauces; to keep walking and _sweating_, and never knowing an easy
moment at having your chocolate in bed or lying down in the afternoon
with a novel--that's a bit too thick for me, thanks! I want my old
figure and complexion, but I want them while I keep on _living_.
For, my dear, I must have the fleshpots--I must, or go balmy--and
that's all there is to it."
The death of her attractiveness to men made her secret bitterness;
that one man, once hers and still loved wretchedly in silence, had
slipped to the crowd who never looked at her any more as a woman to
be desired made its core.
Arturo arrived at the rendezvous twenty minutes late. He came with
his unhurried, Castilian manner, voluble in soft-voiced regret,
intensely calm. Yet the jealous eyes that watched him irritably
noted a difference from his usual self. Under his repose there was
suspense, and his skin had the dead sand-color that means pallor in a
dark face. Yes, something had gone wrong with him, and he had come
to her for help. Her red-brown eyes burned harder. She was glad he
was not happy; that from some cause he was knowing pain like that
which she had come to bear through him. And yet, how dear he was to
her still and always would be!
It seemed to her then, as so often before, that powers designedly
complicating life must have had a hand in the blending of such
attractiveness as Arturo had. There was no effort on his part,
rather an amiable indifference that could be exasperating; still, on
meeting his eyes, or while wishing to meet them, one's will felt
glamour and was held. And this not only because he had almost more
beauty than should go to a man, for she had known others as handsome
who had never stirred the pulses of women as he could. No, Arturo
seemed to her the complete illustration of the inscrutable thing
called charm. Else,--why should she have loved him so terribly,
"have made", as she had often said, "a door-mat of herself for him",
been ready for the most final open recklessness for his sake and only
kept in bounds by his smiling circumspection? Why? And not only
that past slavery; why should the mystery persist when their
_affaire_ had a two-year-old gravestone over it, so that she felt
hope when he sought her in the most passing way, and was only really
miserable when he took pains to let her see plainly the absolute
death of all passion for her?
This unanswerable "why" had brought her punctually to a meeting with
him to-day. And as she watched him light one of his own Spanish
cigarettes, its strange perfume--the same that had clung to the
silver ribbon on Elsie's gardenias--recalling their secret meetings
of other times, she ached to spend her despondent heart in one of the
fiery kisses that once had made heaven of life. Gone. Lost. Dead.
And she was a fool!
With this last reflection she sat up among the pillows and gave a
hitch to her skirt to show a slippered foot that in spite of her
weight, was slender and delicately arched. "I came on time," she
said flatly in the sulky, rugged voice that once had fallen with a
perverse sort of pleasure upon Arturo's ears. "I don't flatter
myself for a moment that you wanted this tête-à-tête for just--me. I
can be useful to you," she mocked. "What is it? What do you want?"
"Don't trouble to say unkind things to me, Paula," he said with cool
reproach. "That sort of preface, to which you are so inclined, ought
to have no place with friends." He leaned toward her. "Anything
you'd want me to do as a comrade, I'd do. And it is as a good
comrade--the only woman that I know that way--that I ask you to save
me to-day."
"Save you?" She looked genuinely concerned. "Are you in trouble,
Arturo?--real trouble? If you are, of course--"
He thanked her with a lift of the brows as only a Spaniard could.
"Not what you would call trouble, perhaps. I don't need money--and
if I did, I should never ask you, of course--nor is there any danger
or disgrace threatening me. Just the same," and desperation hardened
his voice, "I feel like a man on whom sentence of banishment has been
passed. And there is a chance--just one--that you might be able to
delay it. Will you do this for me, Paula? _Amiga_--will you?"
"What is it?" she asked; the tone icy, for usefulness to him as a
friend--and he had emphasized the _amiga_--was as sawdust on her lips.
"It's asking you to be very big and unselfish," Arturo confessed,
"but I know, Paula, that you can be like that--for me! It is asking
you to help me to a little happiness with a woman I love, before she
goes out of my life forever."
She looked at him through a cold rage. Yet as he had said "for him,"
so wholly was she still his, she knew she was going to listen to
more; even, it might be, help him to his desire, though it
contributed another thorn to her unrest.
"I know who you mean--at least I think I do. Elsie Maury. And yet I
can't believe you'd have--have--the cheek--to ask me--!" She broke
off, the fire of misery in her look.
Arturo knew from experience how to meet the various phases of her
sick resentment. The only thing she could not endure from him was
aloofness that might end even friendship between them. He drew away,
a chilled, deliberate gaze studying her.
"Why shouldn't I ask you?"
"Because I hate her!"
"Why should you hate her?"
"Because you don't, I suppose," she said thickly.
"Is she to blame for that? Why not hate me, if you must hate some
one?"
"Oh, you make me seem such a fool--!" Exasperated, she drew herself
nearer the decanter and lifted it over a glass.
Arturo's fingers, with the strength that delicate things sometimes
surprisingly have, the force of wire instead of iron, went about her
wrist. "You've had enough brandy. It excites you. Wait till we
finish, Paula. Then I'll drink with you--in gratitude if you are
kind; in a properly chastened spirit, if you are not. The latter is
the more likely--I can see!"
She pulled her wrist from him and sat back obediently. "Am I
permitted a cigarette?" she flashed, and lighted one, her hand
trembling against her will. "I can't imagine what you see in her,"
followed, venom in the shut-in tone.
"Of course you don't! But does that matter? It isn't necessary--is
it?"
"It's her blondness that gets you. For she's not pretty. Not what
you'd really call pretty!"
"No, she's worse than that."
"She hasn't the ghost of a figure!"
"I hate figures," said Arturo serenely.
She winced, conscious of the flesh above her laced-in waist. "Then
you are different from most men," she retorted.
"You are beginning to flatter me."
She sat very silent after this, smoking in a busy, nervous way, and
suddenly the tears stole down her cheeks. As she threw the cigarette
from her and covered her face with her open hands, hands so
illustrative of her life--burdened with rings, fleshy, with beautiful
nails and nicotine-stained finger tips--a quiver of real sympathy
went over Arturo's face. He left his chair and sat on the divan,
close to her.
"My dear Paula, my dear girl!" He drew down one of the hands and
patted it, while with the other she pulled from her girdle an
expensive handkerchief that seemed a rag of lace and dabbed carefully
her blackened lashes. "What's the use? I want your friendship, I
want it terribly, and as a friend I'd do anything on earth for you.
I am not worth the other, my dear. I tell you that honestly. I am
not worth it."
"What do I care," Paula demanded wildly, "if you are worth it or not?
It wasn't your _worth_ that began it, heaven knows! It's just--that
I can't--seem to get over it as you have." She flung her arm
suddenly about his neck. "Haven't you any love left for me--none? I
am so miserable, worn out with longing for what has gone. Nothing
matters to me. I hate everything! Do kiss me once, for memory?" she
begged brokenly.
He drew down her arm gently. Her eyes fell under his serious gaze.
She knew the most final defeat.
"Too much in love with your Elsie to forget her for even a moment?"
she mocked.
Arturo stood up. "It was a mistake to come to you, Paula. I did not
know--" He broke off and added with great kindness: "I'm sorry you
are so unhappy. I cannot help it. And remember this--I am unhappy,
too." As he reached the entrance curtain he paused sharply and came
back. "One thing I want to make very clear to you, though. Don't
suppose from what I've said that Elsie and I have had an _affaire_.
Oh, no, indeed," he said vehemently. "Make no mistake about that.
She has been a bit--provocative, shall we call it?--but a model in
wives, I assure you! There was just a chance that you--" He looked
down at her thoughtfully. "No matter--that's past!"
"What do you mean by saying she's going out of your life and all that
rot?" Paula suddenly demanded, her glance not meeting his. "Has her
mother called her back to America?" Her voice showed new hope. She
had not dreamed of such a satisfactory result from her anonymous
letter to Nina. "Is she sailing at once?"
"Yes, but her mother has nothing to do with it. How could you think
that what that wax doll might say would matter? Ah, no; it's her
husband. Quite a different tea party, as you English say. He gets
here to-night and by to-morrow she will be on her way to America."
His voice had been growing dull. "As surely as I stand here, I know
that once Elsie goes I will never see her again."
"You know it?" she shrugged in angry impatience, "how can you know
it?"
"I feel it. Premonitions of that sort with me are never wrong."
"America is only five days away on a fast ship--"
"I shall never go to America. I know that, too."
The sound of voices below had been strengthening--louder laughter,
dashes of music, and now stragglers were mounting the stairs. Paula,
as she regained her composure, even felt a spurious sort of
happiness. With an emphasis of gesture she mixed herself an
especially strong brandy and soda, of which she felt in need.
"Come here, Arturo. Sit down again," she said briskly, and as he did
so she gave him a hardy grin. "I'm a silly ass sometimes! Don't
mind what I said. It's true that I've somehow kept on remembering
what you've forgotten, and at times it gets back at me, gives me an
awful knock, but when I said I hated everything--I was a liar. Oh,
there's a lot to live for yet, even without a _grande passion_.
This, for instance," and she lifted the glass. "Now what do you want
me to do? If it isn't too hard--! You don't want me to abduct the
immaculate one for you, I hope?"
Arturo seized her arms. She would have given a good part of her
wealth to have called there for herself the unabashed longing that in
a second transformed his face.
"I've decided to go on to Spain with my cousins to-night. They'll go
straight to Burgos, but I'll go to the mountains, to El Miradero.
All I ask you to do is to accept my invitation to come up there in a
few days for a fortnight and persuade Elsie to ask her husband to let
her wait over and come with you."
"That's all?" she asked in mocking dismay. "A pretty large order, I
call it!"
"You can manage it, Paula. Get Elsie to ask her husband to let her
stay behind him just long enough for her to see Spain--she never
has--and both of you come a few days later. Sidney won't be back
from yachting for another month, so there's nothing to prevent your
coming. And you, who know El Miradero, who loved its beauty--surely
you can tempt her to make this effort. Only delay her return to
America! That's all I want. I don't look beyond that. Probably,"
he added bitterly, "I could bear her going then, when I'd got used to
it. I feel all astray with myself now, from the suddenness of it."
"As a matter of fact," Paula drawled thoughtfully, "I'm leaving for a
few days' visit to Sidney's sister at Bordeaux--you know she married
oodles of money--all that wine business down there. And I thought
that after it I'd have a little whirl at San Sebastian before coming
back here--"
"Well, there you are!" came joyously from Arturo. "Just keep to your
plans. Elsie could join you at San Sebastian--directly _en route_ to
me!"
Paula sipped and thought again silently for a moment, "Quite easy,"
she said. "But let me tell you something--I think you're a fool to
get any deeper into this _affaire_. Elsie Maury's the sort to play
around fire--let her get burned though, and it would be a tragedy for
you both. She has the enlarged kind of conscience. I've met other
Americans like that--an unfinished race! Will you take my advice and
let her alone? Or," she added slowly with some intense meaning,
"will you risk having her on your hands for life?"
"You sound clairvoyant. I've told you I have no plans--I only want
to delay her going." He said this sadly, musingly.
She moved to replace the glass. A smiling and faintly sinister
cunning passed over her face. When she turned to him her eyes were
businesslike. "All right then, if you insist. I'll do what I can."
She stood up, powdered her nose, used her lip stick and lifted the
skinlike gloves. "Will you see her now--she must be here--or do you
want me to see her first?"
"You speak to her first." The words were faint and thick with
feeling. He followed her into the corridor, laid his hand on her
arm, and she felt its burning through the chiffon sleeve. "Get her
to come with you to El Miradero, and Paula--I'll be your servant as
long as I live!"
"Thanks," she said drily, adding: "I mean to help you--thoroughly.
That's the way I am; absolutely indifferent, or a mistress of detail
who spares no pains!"
As she went down the stairs, her eyes, steadily lifted to his, were
smiling in their kindest way.
She found Elsie, in the midst of her golden gown, seated close to a
great vase of lilies in an inner room.
A boyish Hindoo, who was the son of a Maharajah and very much the
fashion of that spring, hung about her, worshipping her fairness, as
he often did. He had been bending his turbanned head to talk softly
to her for the last ten minutes, but his slumbering black eyes were
without content. He could see that she scarcely heard him. Her gaze
wandered; her replies were absent. He knew that when the Marqués de
Burgos came she would be different, awakened; and that for the rest
of the time there the young Spaniard would keep close to her.
Of the specific pain of this waiting to Elsie he did not guess. It
was her last chance to see Arturo. She had come early, expecting to
find him there, eager to make the most of every moment with her. And
as yet he had not sought her. As his last words kept coming back to
her, she began to believe she would not see him at all: "You have
made me suffer what I have never suffered for a woman before," he had
said. And so, perhaps that was to be her last memory of him through
the future far away from him? Well, if it had to be--! She must
conquer herself. It was only accepting the inevitable a little
sooner than she had expected.
Her depression had grown fixed when Paula Vrain sailed up to her,
aglow and smiling in a way that was unusual. She greeted the Hindoo
and then put her arm about Elsie's waist, schoolgirl fashion.
"Come along o' me, dear. I want to have a talk with you," and when
she had whisked her to a quiet spot behind a stairway she hurried on
without preface: "I'm going to Arturo's shooting place up in the
Cantabrian mountains. He's often told you of his little house, El
Miradero. Now you're coming too, aren't you?"
"Why, no."
"No? Why not?"
"This is the first I've heard of it, and besides--"
"Oh, I know!" Paula rattled on. "He meant it to be a piquant
surprise to-day. He told me to insist on your coming with me. I'm
not to take 'no' for an answer!"
"When did he tell you that?"
"A moment ago. He's here. He told me all about how you were
expecting to leave to-night for America and the poor boy is too
miserable to ask you, himself. So, as I and a few others--just who
they are I don't know; Spanish probably--are to be there, he begged
me to come to you as his missionary. Don't disappoint him, Elsie!
Get another furlough from your husband--just two weeks more. I'm
going for a few days to San Sebastian and will motor from there to El
Miradero.
"Oh, my dear, it's so lovely!" she ran on with an enthusiasm that was
secretly fatiguing her. "All of Spain is worth while--so
romantic--so queer! It would be a burning shame to go back to the
States without seeing it--and under such conditions!--In the
towns--and we two might stop over a night or two on our way
back--there are the _serenos_, as they call the night watchmen, in
long cloaks and hoods and carrying lanterns, who sing a drowsy sort
of song that all's well and clear--for all the world like an opera
scene. The tune goes like this--" and she hummed it:
[Illustration: music fragment]
"The _mantillas_ are lovely too! And the _boinas_--they're the
scarlet caps of the countrymen--and oh, the masses of carnations of
every tint that one sees everywhere--the girls go along with them
stuck in a corner of their mouths, and the men in their hats, and
I've even seen them sticking out of the guns of the _carabineros_!
"You see I was at El Miradero three years ago. It's up on a terribly
rough, steep mountain. You seem at the end of the world, looking
down through the clouds. A gorgeous view! You've never known what
solitude and stillness mean until you stand there. _Miradero_ means
watch tower, and that's exactly what it is. Not a thing passes down
that mountain road but a huge, jingling mule coach that Arturo relies
on altogether,--he hasn't a horse or vehicle on the place. You know
he's deadly poor and he goes up there to the simplest life. During
the summers his mother and sister live at an ancestral, awfully
run-down country place about five miles away. This is the only time
in the whole year that they have a chance to be with Arturo, and when
he's alone they drive over in an ancient barouche to see him, or he
goes on a rough tramp to them.
"I got a squint at them once, and I assure you it did me for all
time! The old _marquésa_, Dona Jacinta, looked for all the world
like some queen's marble effigy that had got slowly off its tomb and
robed itself in the most solemn black. The sister,
too--Magdalena--is the most amazing stick! She's five years older
than Arturo and spends most of her life on her knees in the great
cathedral at Burgos. Servants--a pack of them that I'd like to bet
are _honored_ to serve for next to nothing--trail about after them,
carrying their prayer books and reticules and scent bottles and
little parasols. But you won't be bored by the family. They never
appear unless sure that Arturo is absolutely alone and uncontaminated
by his friends.
"Oh, you've no idea how fascinating he is at El Miradero! So simple,
so real, in the roughest of clothes--exactly like a boy on a holiday!
And all Spaniards are at their best once you step under their
roof.--I'll fetch my new car and Athénée, so even if I crowd the
little house you and I will have all the comforts. You needn't
bother bringing a maid, you see. Athénée will do everything for us
both.--Just a two weeks' entrancing Spanish holiday, Elsie, and as
the Vance Hamiltons are sailing about then for New York, why not get
your passage on the same ship? Now--are you game? Is it a go?"
Elsie had allowed herself to be carried on by the stream of words.
They unfolded alluring pictures before her and eased her heart.
Arturo was close to her, thinking of her, and she felt sure this
mountain visit was a quickly arranged plan so that he might not lose
her at once. Of course she could not go--and how she longed to!--but
it gave meaning back to life that he had not gone from her in rage,
leaving her with an aching sense of emptiness and futility.
Paula, who had declared that she was not pretty, realized unwillingly
in that moment how she was something more even than beautiful. She
had never seen a face so changefully vivid. She loved and understood
music, and as Elsie sat there, absorbed, she saw in the veiled eyes
ardors that touched her, as in sublime harmonies,--the burning
trouble of the overture to "Tristan and Isolde," the renunciation
that floated, oncoming and receding, through the Meditation of Thai's.
"I can't go." Elsie said this without force, yet positively. "And
it may be years before I see Paris again." A 'cello in the distance
was playing Rudolph's attic song from "La Bohème." As she listened,
a pang went over her face. "It's all wrong, of course.
I'm--damaged! I should not have stayed here to become what I am. I
should have insisted on going to Burmah to Robert. I didn't. Then I
grew to love it here too much. And now it's punishing me. I want
it--and nothing else. I dread what I'm going to. I've grown away
from it all." Her lips came shut on a sharp sigh. "But I've got to
go."
"Tell me why," Paula demanded.
"That's my life. This has been my playtime. My husband gets here
to-night. We leave at once. I'm all packed. I'm going."
"Going when you don't want to? What rubbish!"
"I ought to want to," Elsie protested, "and in one way, somehow, I
do. My husband is one of the kindest men in the world, Paula. I'll
go home with him and never let him know that it's an awful pull to
leave--what I've grown used to."
For a while they sat silent, Paula pouting and somnolent. Elsie's
face, showing each fugitive thought intensely in its passing, looked
moody and driven as she began, dreamily, to speak again:
"I wonder how I'll feel when I'm really gone?--I wonder! ... I've
been happier in Paris than I ever was in my whole life, except
when--I had my baby."
"Oh, yes, you did have a baby; I remember your telling me," Paula
said, vaguely polite.
"Letty.... Almost three--when she died." The deep thrill in the
simple words gave them majesty. "I haven't missed her here as I will
again in America. If I were only going back--to her!"
"Of course," came from Paula through a bitten yawn. "But, d'you
know, I never felt that way about my two? The girl's a little liar
and a peacock, and the boy's a glutton," she peacefully declared.
Elsie felt herself draw in, rebuffed and chilled by the words, by the
whole air of the speaker's big body,--detached, lounging, bored.
After another dead pause Paula gave a lunge up and straightened.
"Well!--So you'll really go without ever seeing El Miradero?"
"I must."
"You're tiresome!--talking as if you can't please your husband and
yet have your own way. You're not so dull," she drawled with mocking
astonishment. "Put it to him that you've not seen Spain, that there
will never be a chance like this again--as there never will!--then
swear to sail home with the Vance Hamiltons in about two weeks or so.
Can't you do that?"
"No!"
"I could--and I'm not a quick-witted Yankee. Do have a shy at it
anyway--for my sake," she urged, adding as she stood up, "There's
Arturo. I'll send him to you," and she slouched away, swinging her
bag.
CHAPTER V
It was close to five o'clock when a taxicab stopped before the
apartment house on the Rue de Chaillot from which Elsie had set forth
a half hour earlier for the Longueval tea. A cowhide trunk, of
shining darkness from use and mottled with the gay labels of the
Orient, was strapped upon it; a few valises of the same sort banked
the interior. At a glance they were all a man's belongings, and the
owner, Robert Maury, sat among them.
He was in tweeds of a few years' previous cut that hung upon him in
an overloose way. With skin browned to coffee color, he looked
healthy in spite of the emaciation that had come from hard work and a
wasting strain on the body through great and humid heat.
He was a big man, lean, flexible, with black hair that had the
glitter of gray on some of its small ripples. His shoulders were
spare, very broad and so absolutely level they were bladelike; with
them went the torso of one who has spent much of his life in the
saddle,--swung back, so that as he walked, and even through a coat, a
cleft would appear along the spine between the powerful muscles
ridged on each side. He had an impulsive, jerky way of moving, not
without grace, and this showed as he plunged down his head to give a
glance of inquiring interest at the windows of the house before which
the cab had stopped.
"_Entresol_--the floor above the street--she often said that in her
letters," he thought, his look tenderly quizzical as he added: "With
the pink ruffled blinds, of course. That must be it. She's there."
He had grown used to humming and whistling at his work in the
solitudes, and as he sprang out he wanted to sing, wanted to shout up
to the near-by windows with the rosy blinds, "Elsie--hi--oh!" as he
often had when riding home to her in the old mining days in the
American Northwest.
He checked the desire, as he had been subduing so many of his
impulses to the formality of shipboard since embarking at Singapore.
He was in Paris, its exquisite and permanent finish the result of a
dozen centuries; no longer an individual in a wilderness, he was one
of a vast and conservative herd, ruled by herd laws that made all
move in public with the one step and the one composed look whatever
the heart might feel, whether of good or ill. A restraint from this
consciousness was growing every moment.
So instead of shouldering most of his luggage as he would have liked,
he permitted the professor-like _concierge_, with side whiskers and
alpaca cap, to carry it up. And when this was done, instead of
telling the _cocher_ what a treat to eyes tired of Asia was his face,
like a big, pink and white cherry, his white glazed top hat and the
full-blown tulip in his tightly buttoned light overcoat, he contented
himself with bestowing on him a _pourboire_ that brought the hat off
in an emotional flourish, since it was an appreciation far more to
his liking than any returned wanderer's spoken enthusiasm would have
been.
"Ah, _ces Americains! Toujours genereaux_!" he spluttered joyously
as he climbed back to his seat.
Robert found Julie at the open door of the apartment, staring at his
luggage. She removed the stare to him, and before he could speak
began a scurry of surprised sentences which Robert's school French
went limping after:
Oh, what ill luck that Monsieur Maury had not informed madame that he
was coming earlier than he had previously stated!--Madame's trunks
were all ready, and a truck from the hotel around the corner was to
come for them after dinner and take them to the train--but madame was
out! Madame would not of course have gone--oh, not at all for a
single second!--if she had dreamed of monsieur's coming so very far
ahead--but would monsieur be so good as to come right in to the
_salon_?--and it was this way, if he pleased--Ah, was that his
foot?--What a misfortune!--The stingy, Austrian lessee of the flat
had already turned off the electricity, so would he be very careful
and keep along by the wall as the hall was so dark and so full of
madame's things--ah, that was well! She would pull up the _salon_
blinds now, and clear a chair for monsieur--like that!--And would he
not have some tea or coffee or sherry or whiskey--as there was some
left of everything--while he waited for madame?
Robert had followed her obediently through the almost black hall,
stubbing his toe against one low trunk and his elbow against a high
one. Trunks. Only trunks to greet him! He found himself looking at
them in stupefaction. Elsie was not there, but her trunks--and
surely there were a dozen of them--were like hillocks in the place.
The warmth sank out of his blood as he gazed about the strange room
from which every personal possession of Elsie's had disappeared. A
chilling sense of intrusion and detachment crept over him.
When he had found that he could come hours earlier than his telegram
had stated, he had not hesitated to hurry on, impelled to it by one
picture,--the delight of standing suddenly before Elsie, seeing her
wheel to him in surprise with the well-remembered little squeal of
joy that she used to give sometimes; this to be followed by her
childish jump into his arms--for she had always been much of a child
with him--when she would croon into his neck at the delight of
meeting. It was so he had remembered her.
He sat down, very meekly, it seemed to Julie. She would have liked
him better if he had shown temper at his wife's absence. That would
have been unreasonable, of course, but Julie liked men to be very
unreasonable in their demands on the love of women. She did not
realize that he was dazed by a doubt that had come with full
clearness before him for the first time. Would he find his wife
changed? Not only changed in small things; would Elsie be a
different sort of woman? He had had glimmers of this possibility
often before but had been too busy and too tired for progressive
analysis in his reveries over her hasty, mildly affectionate,
sometimes lengthy and sometimes brief letters. He had always seen
her as she was in the photograph that stood on the bureau in his
bungalow,--her pale hair, with the look of whitish dust upon it,
parted over her serene brow and knotted low; a round-necked frock
showing the swaying throat above which the small head was poised so
winningly; about her the purity that had always suggested to him the
restfulness of a church, the light of tapers, lilies in pale hands.
So she was in that picture and so she had seemed to him from the
beginning when he had met her just past childhood among her mother's
card-playing, cocktail-drinking set, pensive and interested,
uncritical of what her deeply gray eyes rested on, yet separate from
it.
And now!--These trunks? This maid with the cunning and schooled look
whose study of him his sharp eyes had noted? Most of all, the old,
soaked-in fragrance in the air--not of flowers, for to that he would
have responded--but of some cloying essence related to the
sense-awaking, muscadine sweetness of the East used by the native
women who danced and bargained, or bargained without dancing?
Slightly as he had known the Cyprian world, and that only through
curiosity at long intervals, he felt an aura of distaste go over him
to be reminded of it even by a perfume, on entering the home that had
been his wife's for three years.
"Where has Madame Maury gone?" He asked this very clearly.
"Oh, merely to a large tea at the Countess Longueval's on the Rue de
Lille, over on the other side of the river," Julie hurried on,
anxious to help her mistress, for the open scrutiny of this man's
light-blue eyes began to impress her. "Ah, it was the last chance to
say good-by to so many friends, monsieur. Madame is so much a
favorite! Ah, truly she has many friends to lament her going. As
for me," and the sincere tears showed, "I cannot think of what my
life will be without my adorable young madame. Desolate!
Nothing--nothing at all! Ah, _le bon Dieu_!"
Robert's hand went toward his pocket at this outburst, then
sensitively he decided to defer material approval of such real
devotion until the hour of parting.
"I quite understand your regret," he said, and asked, "What number on
the Rue de Lille is this house?"
Julie gave it, adding, "Shall I not telephone to madame there, to
return at once, and--?"
"On no account!"
The low-toned decision was that of the master and sent him up in her
opinion. This man was not a meek sheep. She saw that now. He had
fire in him, kept out of sight. A quiet man on the surface--that was
all. It was then very well that the _chère, petite_ madame, was
leaving before matters had gone any further with that young Spaniard
who cared not who saw the desperate almost angry love for her in his
gaze--ah, and _Dieu_, what an adorable man! She could, herself, be
quite insane about him. But it was best there was to be a sudden end
of him, for this big, brown stranger with the fagged eyes, though he
could keep the world between him and his wife for so long, was not
one to be played for a fool. Oh, no, not at all! And the Spaniard,
fashioned though he was to pull a woman's heart out of her, was not
to be trusted to last in the daily wear and tear of life. That she
had always felt!
She renewed her offer of tea to Robert. He refused it, adding:
"I'll smoke here a few moments. Afterward, if you'll be good enough
to show me, I'll freshen up a little from the train, and perhaps look
in at the Rue de Lille."
"_Bien_, monsieur! Just in here--_voilà_?--is the water and fresh
towels." She hurried away, her look secretly anxious.
And as Robert smoked in the room made cheerless by the impending
departure, the prettiness of it spoiled by trunks, hat boxes and
frippery rubbish arranged in heaps for discarding, he tried to see,
side by side, the three, separate years as he and Elsie had spent
them:
Himself, a machine; a fanatical worker, living in his brain and for
ambition; every appetite, every bodily need made to intensify its use
toward success. With this there had come a closeness to Infinity
that had kept him from callousness,--oh, the wide spaces where the
cold fire of stars had hung so low they spoke to him as voices from
those distant worlds! He had worked with brain and hands through
days of furnace heat to lie on his bungalow porch when they were
done, gazing with wordless wonder and trust up at these friendly
stars until, with deep sleep, he would seem to fall into kind, cool,
black depths where winds rose to gales and revived the wasted body
until the dawn burned again and brought the straining life. This had
lasted in a drugged sort of peace until a few months previous when
his return to Europe, and after that to America, had showed on the
horizon.
"Come," home called; then louder and louder, "Come back! Oh, come,
come!"
He had begun then to wish for many things, blurred before: For Elsie
first, for the living girl of the banded hair and the deep-musing
smile, her grace and girlishness and simpleness and truth. And with
her beside him for a sight of temperate skies: the streams of France
under slim, plumed poplars; perhaps the hedges of England with
glowworms lighting the long and pallid dusks while the hawthorn scent
made the heart ache from its too much sweetness. And after that,
America--home--the first winter taste of it--glacially splendid,
pure, sparkling, a tonic of whiteness! All this with Elsie.
He looked into the uphill street at the high, drab houses whose
windows were hung with lace or silk, and at the silver-bright motors
rushing past them. What different years she had known!
Paris--perhaps of all the civilized world the spot most embellished
in a multiform way, most unlike his humid, Burmese wild--her home;
and vividly so, for this apartment was close to the world-known
Champs Elysées, that was the artery through its heart. These trunks
held the things most precious to her. This maid of hers was critical
of him, almost as if he had come an intruding spy within an enemy's
lines. And herself?--she was spending the last moments of this last
day with a crowd of society people who must have come to mean much
more to her than he had guessed. He felt a heated eagerness either
to rout or ratify these impressions. He wanted to know more of her
and quickly. He would see who her friends were; see her among them.
Still with the feeling of being out of his element, he made such
preparations as were possible for appearance at a fashionable tea.
The water dashing into the marble basin upon his hands was like a
loosened cataract to his sensitive ears; he found himself walking in
a hushed way with small and careful steps unlike his own; it seemed a
staggering intrusion to enter his wife's bedroom at all and, as he
fastened his tie before the mirror there, his hands were unsteady.
He was not a fanciful man and even as this mood persisted he resented
it, was inclined to give one of his short and vigorous laughs at it.
What folly--! Just because Elsie was absent and the many trunks and
the heavy perfume were there instead, he was acting like a nervous
schoolboy.
With this thought setting his teeth in amused self-impatience, he
found his hat in the _salon_ and then came back deliberately to the
bedroom for no reason than to send a defiantly hardy gaze about it.
He went to the big bed and looked down at the pillows, fancying
Elsie's face there, a smile and the mist of sleep in her eyes.
Needle points of tenderness went over him as his darkened fingers,
with traces of old sun blisters on them, fingered the lace upon the
spread. A dream came into his eyes. If he could see her there! ...
Why--if he could see her at all! One full look, and he felt sure
that this depression, as of an untimely outsider, would leave him.
And he could be gazing into her face in ten minutes! He roused
himself. He would go at once.
Julie answered his call and found he had opened the door to the outer
passage. From there he gave her a short and distinct message: He
might miss his wife at the tea; she might already be on her way home.
In that case Julie was to say that she was to wait, and he would
return immediately.
She peeped like a conspirator from the _salon_ window until she saw
him hail a cab, after which, with her lips pursed shrewdly, she made
a rush for the telephone. "A husband," her thoughts ran, "when
expected, can be a pleasant thing. Not expected, the devil himself
might be more welcome. I know what I know! Madame must be told that
he is on hand and very much to be counted in. Why, he is crazy with
love for her, although he has the cold English air! Oh, yes! Now
that he is here--well, my faith, make no mistake!--_he is here_!"
CHAPTER VI
One of the Longueval footmen in buff and silver took Julie's
flustered telephone message for Madame Maury that her husband had
unexpectedly arrived and was on his way to her at the countess's. He
made an attempt to find her among the crowd that strayed over gardens
and house. Not succeeding and other duties calling, he deferred the
search; meant to continue it; forgot it.
Elsie was in the garden on a bench behind one of the forsythia bushes
from which the yellow flowers were almost gone, and Arturo was beside
her. He had been there for ten minutes, during which he had talked
earnestly, and then had become silent while smoking the cigarettes
whose odd fragrance she knew would always be remembered with some
touch of the glamour that pained her now. Within a window close to
them, an English singer, with a contralto of such searching sweetness
it touched the most cynical to a passing reality of love's "old, old
pain", gave Kipling's words to the padding, yearning, Eastern music:
Alone, upon the housetops to the north,
I turn and watch the lightning in the sky,
The glamour of thy footsteps in the north--
Come back to me, beloved, or I die!
Far, far below the still bazaar is laid,
Far, far below the weary camels lie,
The camels and the captives of thy raid--
Come back to me, beloved, or I die!
They both sat listening, not looking at each other. They seemed to
hear the jingling clatter of the camels sinking cumberously to rest;
distant cymbal clashes from the captives who danced; the sob of the
woman watching from the housetop. Arturo was very pale. Elsie, who
had lighted one of his cigarettes for herself, let it burn out in her
drooped hand:
My father's wife is old and harsh with years,
And drudge of all my father's house am I,
My bread is sorrow and my drink is tears--
Come back to me, beloved, or I die!
"Will you come to El Miradero?" Arturo asked and so closely upon the
last cry of the song the question seemed its concluding despair. He
did not move to her, seemed to find it hard even to look at her.
"Will I see you there?"
"I've told you," Elsie said, and made a regretful, negative sign with
the hand that held the cigarette.
"Won't even try!"
"Cannot. I've told you why, Arturo," she said in a deeply sorrowful
way.
"Then this is the end--now--and here." His hand stole across and lay
upon her shoulder in the lightest way. "It has been my own folly
believing that you loved me," and his hopeless voice had a boy's
tears.
The tenderness she felt for him broke through the cloud upon her
eyes. "Don't say that; nor think it. I care--Arturo."
"Words, words."
"Words? The thought of never seeing you again is a sort of death.
And yet there's another thing--there's my caring for Robert, for I do
care for him too, in a different way--"
A triangular frown shot up between Arturo's brows. "I know," he
broke in, the tone uninterested. "You don't hate him; you even like
him. He was a habit with you once, and habits can be resumed."
"No, I must be honest." She faced him, a light as from a shrine
within quivering through the make-up of her exquisite, little face.
"The question I see is this: If I go away where I will never see you,
never hear any one even speak your name, won't I learn to forget you
and be satisfied again in the affection I had for him? His feeling
for me is not like yours--a terrifying sort of happiness to me. Yet
it's steady; so deep! He'd die for me."
He laughed. "Without a doubt. And yet for years he has _lived_
quite comfortably without you! However--" His bitter look was flung
along the silence that held them. "I see you are determined.
Besides, I am a fatalist. Some ancestor of mine must have been
converted to Islam's belief in predestination when the Moors held
Spain. Yes, it can only be a heritage from Morocco that I have the
most absolute faith in the end being arranged for us, waiting for
us--though hidden from us--before we take one step. It seems now
that no matter what I wish or do, it is written that I am to lose
you."
He gave a swift, wretched look around. No one was near them. Before
Elsie knew his intention, before she could have checked it if she had
wished, he had bent his dark and gleaming face to hers with a
sensuously yearning movement that was a sort of agony to her, and
found her mouth. His lips quivered there in a raging, deep-reaching
kiss under which her will first hardened in terror and then dissolved
in a despairing rapture.
"Darling, darling, darling," he whispered, the tone shaken, "_adios_,
ah, _adios_--if it must be--!"
He was gone while his breath lingered on her face. Before she could
realize it he was lost in the fringe of people about the windows, and
she was sitting alone in the leaf shadows, the most riotous sweetness
with a bitter edge going over her spirit. She remained so, with
strained eyes and breathless.
As if she peered through a storm she was looking into herself, trying
to find the deep under truths that women have a way of edging from.
Many centuries have gone to the making of concealment and pretense
with them, yet to all but the generically celibate moments come that
bring the consciousness of not having lived in any real sense until,
whether early or late, there has been surrender to passionate
obsession. Elsie knew this now and for a moment felt rage at the
fate that robbed her of it when it was close to her, inviting her,
cajoling her to its mastering delight.
Perverse it was, this infatuation. For when she tried to study it as
one would the colors in a fabric, she saw that the things for which
she had come to love Arturo were not the things she naturally valued
in a man. She loved his implanted pride of race--no doubt narrow,
intolerant--yet outwardly all allure, silken and soft, and that
created his amused consideration of the restraining morality meant
for the small people. She loved his smiling civility that could,
when he wished, so mysteriously convey a rigid exclusiveness; the
exotic richness of his dark glance that, slowly traveling over her,
would make her flush with a guilty delight as if he had miraculously
bared her body, looked, and found her sweet. She loved his
beauty--all the blended charm of it--his gaze, and smile, and voice,
the way he moved with prodigal freedom, warm grace. And perhaps,
most of all, she loved all these things because they swept over her
with an electric sense of danger,--a fear of him that could make her
heart give jerking beats and seem to hold her, thrilled and
listening, high above the dull things of every day.
And was this all?--no gleam of reverence, of the spirit, in her
feeling for him? Ah, there was. To-day, and for the first time, she
saw it. She respected him that he could love as he did her, as
simple and unashamed in his reasoning about it as the primeval man
who tracked the woman he wanted for mate patiently, tirelessly,
through the veiled turnings of the forests. For a year he had kept
beside her, his heart in his face. All had read it there. He had
given no thought to them. She had been the sun in his eyes and he
had seen nothing else. Wayward, spoiled, selfish he was, living
indolently, according to the debilitating law of his class, upon what
money came through the sacrifices of women; yet he had made her know
what she had never before known,--the sweetness of that absolute
supremacy over the will and heart of a man, like no other joy in the
life of a woman that, while it holds, can make up to her for the loss
of many things otherwise precious.
Coveting another sight of Arturo, wondering if he were really gone,
Elsie, a little later, strolled into a small room in one of the
wings. She knew that a roulette wheel had been set up there for the
countess's intimates. The call of the man acting as _croupier_ had
reached her on a regular rhythm through the curtains: "_Fait vos
jeux!--Rien va plus!_" And so had the clatter of the ivory counters,
gaily disputing voices, laughter, even screams.
She had always been too poor to gamble with her extravagant or
wealthy friends; to-day did not even watch the players, and with the
Hindoo again beside her, sat at one side, apart from the crowd. She
was silent, and a tiredness to the core made her whitened face, with
the shadowed lids half-veiled, an absolute mask.
Through a confused moment where only her own thoughts were plain she
seemed to look straight at a man who entered, although in reality she
saw him but vaguely. He gave her a brief glance, looked away; then,
startled, he turned sharply, came a step nearer and stopped again,
recognition and dismay in his gaze. The look plunged through the
cloud on Elsie's mind, and it rallied to attention. At this the
actual earth seemed to drop from under her chair.
She was looking at Robert. He it was who stood there, motionless,
whose eyes with their studying look had the effect of a hand pressing
her back, barring her approach to him. "Stay where you are," they
seemed to say, "while I get used to believing that this can be you."
She rose in a nervously listless way, a cigarette burning between her
fingers, and swept to him.
"Robert! I thought I must be seeing things!" This came in a shrill
tone, her vampirish mouth jerking sideways.
Quite suddenly she knew that communion between them could be bearable
to her only if kept to a surface lightness. And as a help she
deliberately continued a freakish gaiety that seemed to reach Robert
across a distance and hold him there. It was not her usual manner,
for in spite of the froth and caprice of her life she had retained a
sincerity of bearing and utterance unlike most of the women who were
her intimates.
The effect she produced on him, in her yellow gauze, that though
fashioned for afternoon wear was so transparent it left a good deal
of her body visible, with her face undisguisedly tricked out and her
gleaming cigarette poised, was a harsh one,--a marionette with whom
fashion was idolatry; an over-decorated, empty eggshell. She could
feel this and in a desperate way persisted in the affectation that
sustained her, the more so that under Robert's earnest gaze a feeling
of guilt made her hideously uncomfortable.
"Throw that away," Robert said quietly with a scant look at the
cigarette.
She gave an empty laugh,--a new laugh to him, of a part with her
fluttering, disdainful carriage. "Your first words a command! I'd
forgotten the thing!" She turned to flick it from her fingers to a
table that held the smokers' service. "How on earth did you get
here?" she ran on, and without waiting for his reply, continued,
"Julie sent you, of course. Let's get out of this," and as he mutely
followed: "What a banal ending to our third act, Robert! Husband and
wife meet after long years,--why, sacred from all eyes, that should
have occurred at home. You know," and in the gayest way she thrust a
hand through his arm, "it's impossible to be emotional in a crowd.
Among a crowd of your Burmese or Hindoos, perhaps yes--not one like
this. So you've queered the drama, my dear."
"It seems so," Robert admitted, and then vigorously, "How soon can
you get away?"
"Now," she said casually; "we'll go now."
"You'll have to say good-by to your hostess first--"
"Heavens, no!" she laughed. "Haven't an idea where she is--and she
wouldn't thank me. Come along. There are millions of taxicabs
hanging about."
She went with birdlike grace through the garden ahead of him. He
could not see that her eyes were searching for Arturo, for a last
sight of him, though only at a distance and among a crowd. They
could not find him. He must have gone away in his despair, and
frankly; as she was going in hers, but masking it under laughter.
"You hadn't any tea," Elsie exclaimed as they waited for a cab to
come to them. "You were used to your tea in Burmah with all those
English--of course! You must have some. Julie can manage it, I dare
say."
He saw the disordered apartment, the trunks, and the woman's too
intelligent eyes, and felt the same scent that floated to him from
his wife's golden draperies intensified there to an informing
reminder. "We've plenty of time. Can't we go somewhere for tea?"
"Oh, would you like to?" she drawled gladly. "That would be quite
too _chic_. I'll take you to a place that is the last word in
novelties. _Tout-à-fait Parisian_!" She gave an address as they
entered a cab.
The outline of the situation between them, the details of her
part--that of the wife meeting her husband after long absence--were
clear to her. She drew off her glove submissively and laid her hand
on one of Robert's with a faintly urgent pressure.
"I can't believe it yet, Robert. I simply can't believe it," she
said helplessly, and smiled.
He smiled back, not his own smile; his lips were pushed to it. "I
had not meant to be so startling, my dear."
They were whizzing along a stretch of empty, pale gray street that
gave him perfect opportunity to kiss her. He knew this, knew that
she expected it. There was something appalling in feeling that he
had no desire to kiss that foolish mouth, hard with a metallic red
dye. He drew her to him, and their lips met briefly.
"You're different, Robert," she said as she sank back, studying him
dreamily, and felt a great satisfaction in being able to say this
truthfully. The subversion in herself could be better defended since
he, too, was changed.
"I'm burnt almost black and I've lost twenty pounds, if that's what
you mean."
"I don't mean that. And I don't mean those tiny lines that have come
about your eyes--"
"Sun squint--focussing through a blinding glare. They won't last, so
don't let them trouble you."
"There's something else," she murmured, and the smeared lids
fluttered over her steadily placed gaze. "Either you're very
tired--or you've grown old--or you're bored. You used to be so
impulsive, with a happy look--and I liked that."
Never given to evasions, he had been swept absolutely clean of
pretense in the simplicity in which he had lived. The impulse to
speak out had to be obeyed. And through it he might get a little
nearer to her.
"Well, let me tell you something, Elsie. _You_ don't seem yourself.
Not the same at all!"
She laughed out; a dismayed trill born back of the lips. "Really?
Ah, my dear, you must remember I'm three years older; and that I was
a girl literally from the backwoods when you saw me last. I'm not
that now--_Dieu merci!_--so I dare say I seem astoundingly different
to you." The crayoned eyebrows, that vanished into hair strokes like
the tilted-up ends of a lash, flickered demurringly. "You liked the
old me better than this me--now, didn't you?"
"I did." He pressed her hand gently while deliberately studying her.
"Why do you do all that?"
"All what?"
"Put all that stuff on your face?"
"How crude you are!" she frowned, and continued on a drawl.
"_Embellissement, mon cher. Pour la beauté, pour le charme!_"
"Do speak English!"
"Very well. Any other questions?"
"Yes," he said brusquely. "Do you suppose that you fool anybody?"
"Oh, you dear, big, simple thing!" Elsie retorted and sank away from
him in a flurry of gayety. "Why, all the women here touch up! We
don't try to fool any one. We do it _before_ every one, and it is
chic to like to do it. _Voilà!_" She whisked her hand from his hold
and pulled a silver vanity case from her bag. "Now that you're rich
you'll give me a gold one--won't you?" she murmured as she opened it.
A mirror that lined the inner part of the top flashed out, and
beneath it Robert saw a half dozen, tiny, silver lids that covered
what were mysteries to him. He did, however understand the use of
the lip stick that she daintily poised and whose tip was a venomously
red bullet.
"What are you going to do?" came from him in exasperated surprise.
"Show you, my dear, how we _Parisiennes_ dot the 'i' of whatever
stock of good looks we have--"
"It doesn't help your stock with me," he said and drew down her hand
with force. "Please put that away or--better still--chuck it out of
the window!"
"Oh, really?--Well, I'll put it away," she said with the meekness of
fatigue. "You great simple-minded barbarian, you'll have to get used
to things that are not quite--raw. We can't all be rough diamonds
and virgin gold. That's all you've seen for so long--and that's what
you are. Virgin gold?" she mused. "Not in demand in big cities. A
little alloy--not quite perfection--is much preferred. And it really
wears better, my dear."
"You are mistaken, and you are misjudging me," he said very clearly,
jarred by the gay patronage of the tone. "I'm quite of the world in
my tolerance. If you needed help of this sort and applied it
delicately to your face, I'd not mind. In fact, if delicately done,
probably I'd not know of it. Civilization of this sort doesn't exist
only in cities like Paris." His voice grew kinder, although his eyes
remained sternly grave. "It's been from the beginning of the world,
and it is in the East, wherever there are women. But--and make a
note of it--they are always women of a certain sort. For instance,
when I was in Canton I saw Chinese women who went this Paris
face-painting a good many points better--even made their lips seem of
solid gold. But they were the women of the flower boats. You know
what that means?"
"Oh, yes. I remember you wrote me all about those curious, little
creatures. Well, I'm glad you weren't such a pillar of propriety
that you wouldn't have a look at them in their pretty flower boats."
Her tone became open ennui. "I tell you, Robert, frankly, it does
seem an awful waste of time objecting to a lot of unimportant,
surface things. Let people do what they like, I say--of course,
nothing that would send them to jail! That's what we feel here, at
any rate. Why bother? It's all the same in a hundred years!"
"I don't like your philosophy." He said this in a tone she
remembered from the past. It had never been used to her then, and
only in directions to those under him when he outlined something
conclusively, a silencing of argument in the economy of words, every
one of which was bitten off clean.
She laughed--the same trill from the lips. "Sorry," she said briefly.
"And though this may seem to you the opinion of one akin to a lout or
a clodhopper--lacking your opportunity for polish, you know--I'll be
glad when you can come to see that your face is prettier, better in
every way, without whitewash and red ink--for that's the impression I
get from it."
"And when will that time be, I wonder?" She murmured this, giving a
brief shrug, yet with anger in the tone.
"No need to wonder. I'm sure it will be when you have left Paris
behind you--perhaps not until it has been left behind a long time.
Yet, I am hopeful."
At his words her hidden grief took on active life, put fangs into
her. As she remained serious, he quickly grew tender.
"Elsie," he said, closed his hand on hers and gave it a steady
pressure, "fancy us getting into this dispute when we've just found
each other again! You'll bear with me a little. If you seem to me
foolishly to damage your real and bewitching self, I dare say I do
seem a rough fellow to you. We'll help each other. Shall we?"
"We've got to," Elsie said, and the words had something of a
comrade's earnestness, though her spirit was now weeping for its
secret bread.
Soon they were seated in the tea shop.
CHAPTER VII
The place came at Robert like a knock on a fresh sore. There are in
Paris--or were before the war had made it augustly grave--small tea
rooms in several and queer places. Some opened frankly off a
boulevard or residence street. Some, catering to a selected
clientele, were found in a back courtyard reached through an
_impasse_; or in the rear of modiste and manicure shops; or up a
flight of stairs in a studio building; or across the Seine in some
_cul-de-sac_ of the _Quartier_. However diversified their placing,
and whether luxurious or plain in furnishing, their significant
qualities were alike. All were oriental, therefore fittingly kept in
heavy shadow, perfumed, secretive. Quite respectable as far as
conduct, they yet were safe places for those who wished to meet to
talk and not be seen.
This one was in the neighborhood of the Rond Point, the street thick
with trees. Elsie led Robert up a green alley to a small house at
the back of a garden. The lower floor had a show window crowded with
various lengths of ancient lace, with antique jewelry and silver.
There was only an old Frenchman in the shop, polishing a bit of
metal. Elsie nodded to him and went up a stairway that would have
seemed to lead to the merchant's home. Instead, at a turning, the
light changed to a violet dusk, the scent of rose potpourri stole
out, and a Hindoo was seen at the top, sitting on the floor, his
knees hunched. He rose, bowed deeply to the visitors, and on
linen-sandalled feet went soundlessly ahead of them to one of the
screened tables. Before this was reached other screens were passed,
subdued voices and laughter coming from behind them. No one looked
out. Visitors here had no curiosity about their neighbors.
"This feverish effect seems rather overdone if its _raison d'être_ is
really--tea." Robert said this coldly. "Do you come here often?"
"Tea is merely a trimming. This sort of thing is a fad. Its
queerness helps Parisians to escape for an hour from themselves and
the actual," Elsie said, her elbows on the table, chin on her laced
fingers.
She felt a drowsy indifference to whatever Robert might think of
these caprices. No doubt they were foolish. Very well--what of it?
"I was here only once before, and that's three months ago. As a
guide takes a tourist about, I thought it might amuse you to see the
odd little place. You're not amused. Too bad!"
During a few moments they became silent. They faced each other,
while in the mysteriously sacred province of each brain thoughts rose
and throbbed that in effect separated them as if the world had
suddenly parted their bodies again. Elsie was remembering her only
other visit to this place.
On a March day of raw, high winds she had gone there to meet Arturo.
Unable to come, he had sent Serafin with his apology and with
instructions to talk to Elsie and detain her there for a half hour,
when he hoped to appear.
She had been content to watch the man's long, shorn face and slanted,
unsmiling eyes while he told her of interesting things; of Spain; but
mostly of his master, his beloved foster brother. He had dwelt with
unction on Arturo's rank:
The title had been created in 1470. He was the eighteenth Marqués de
Burgos and twice a grandee of the first class. "_Gravedad, lealdad y
amor de Dios_" was the motto of his family.
"Perhaps my master has lost sight of the last--the love of God--in
the life of cities as young men live it to-day; but the other things
are his--dignity and loyalty--these, through everything. Ah,
_señora_, I wish you could know Spain and behold my master there in
his rightful place! It is beautiful to see. Yes, the honor done his
family is very beautiful--for it is now so poor that the old palace
in Burgos with its quarterings engraved over the great, arched doors
is crumbling in many places. Out in the world, particularly in
America, nothing seems to matter but money. It is not so in Spain.
The uncontaminated _sangre azul_ is worshipped there just for
itself," he had said, a shining awe in his sunken eyes. "When the
_Señor Marqués_ goes to court, he enters the greatest of the three
halls, the _antecámera_. There is no honor that he does not have.
When he goes to an audience with royalty the guards strike the marble
floor with their swords for him, and the sound is like a thousand
fencers in combat. Ah, it is glorious to be of this blue blood of
Spain, descended from the _hidalgos_ of Castile, one of the ancient
ones in the _Grandeza_!"
All this had made a mind picture that had captivated Elsie. Then, of
a sudden, in mixed unbelief and rage, she had seen the man change; he
had trembled hideously, one dark hand with nails that were polished
fangs had closed on hers, and while his teeth were set against the
words they yet had broken from him in spurts:
"I love you, too.--Men must love you easily.--You are the kind of
woman that men of my race cannot see without emotion--you are so
white--a golden fairness--saint--angel! Ah," as, her eyes blazing,
she managed at last to get her hand from him, "I am without hope,
_señora_. Never had I meant to speak.--This place has
witchery--silent, and dark and sweet, and you there before me
listening so sweetly--ah, give me of your pity! Forgive me!"
"You need forgiveness," she had replied, rising in cold rage. "If I
tell the Marqués de Burgos that his servant--"
"_Never!_"
She had paused, terrified by the fire that had leaped to the sunken
eyes with the look of a goaded animal as it turns to attack.
"Never that! You do not understand. You are ignorant of anything
that is not American--like all your shop-keeping race. I am a
Basque! You don't know what that means. You don't know that I
belong not to Spain really, but to a free people. I am entitled to
bear arms; all Basques are. But because we have through centuries
become a poor and plain people of the mountains, we have laid aside
our noble rights, and we serve--but only where we wish! Only where
our hearts call! We serve willingly then, but proudly. So tell the
_Señor Marqués_ what I have said to you. For a moment as the Marqués
de Burgos, although my foster brother, he will be enraged--that is
true. As a man, he will quickly understand my temptation and
overlook it. Spaniards are different from your fish-cold Americans!
They find toleration for any mistake born of what is called here _le
crime passionel_."
"Let me pass," Elsie had said, and had gone, her _crêpe_ tunic, that
fluttered backward with the free turbulence of the Winged Victory's
draperies, giving the effect of a queen's withdrawal.
Yet with malice born of her insulted pride, she had paused at the
counter so that Serafin could see her pay and hear her distinct words
to the Hindoo: "This is for my tea--and _this_ is for tea for the
valet of the Marqués de Burgos, should he wish any, while he waits
here for his employer."
She had felt too humiliated to tell Arturo, and the incident had
seemed forgotten. Its resurrection in her thoughts was like a
repulsive roughness brushing her flesh.
Robert's mind had been quickening during the few moments' silence; at
first not with past events. His eyes, while resting on Elsie, often
did not see her at all, or but vaguely, while he stared inward,
analyzing his disappointment in its relation to himself.
He had expected rapture from his home-coming. And the first flavor
had been delicious. Nothing short of perfection could have continued
at this height. And instead of perfection there was only the
blurred, the damaged, the unfamiliar, the unexpected. His most
important possession, from promise of sweetness, had taken on the
sterility of stone. This strange Elsie eluded him, irritated him.
She seemed branded by a life lived foolishly in Paris. The city
loomed up between them, dividing them. A hundred years seemed to
have passed since he had joyously looked up at the rose-pink shades
of the apartment on the Rue de Chaillot. He felt dejected, baffled.
And through this bewilderment he sought for the basic truth in
himself. After all, how much had he missed Elsie during his absence
from her?
Two beings, closely bound, are separated for years and live
diversely. Change does not come to one alone. Absence must act
alike on the chemistry of both,--transmute the old, assimilate the
new, mellow and shape and crystallize. Outwardly Elsie was so unlike
his memory of her he was revolted, saddened. He saw that inwardly he
was, in his way, as altered. He had grown nearer to the essential
and natural things; used to spell-bound self-communing; had come
nearer to his spirit; impatient of intrusions that were unsought.
Loneliness can be a thing that finds food in itself. Bitter at
first, it can stealthily change to an addiction to isolation and
solitude. And isolation like his with only men, they fiercely alive
in a struggle with the earth, might so emphasize sheer manful
virility that the revival of life with a woman might be found full of
irritating dislocations that only perfect sympathy could disregard.
A feeling of inertia without the liveliness of pain became a weight
upon him. There had been much of the boy in him at his work always.
It seemed to have left him forever. He felt old, and with this
intolerant in the doggedly acrid way that the old can so easily
become.
Almost at once he knew that these reflections led to one desire--to
get away by himself for an interlude of liberty before taking up the
problem of Elsie--her casualness, flippancy, insincerity, her veneer
and her many trunks.
In contrast to companionship with her, he saw the journey home as it
might be without her. England first--this a wise business move of
which he had not yet spoken to her--and then the voyage to New York
with four men with whom he felt that satisfying intimacy that makes
no slightest effort to express itself; irresponsible drifting
while--as on his journey across the Indian Ocean and the
Mediterranean--drinking in the heaving reaches of water with his
land-burnt eyes, tasting the salt winds as reviving food; pipes;
poker; and desultory talks on deck as late as he pleased.
This picture began to have the appeal that thought of a stolen
holiday has to a fagged schoolboy, demanding that he creep from the
classroom and make a plunge for a day of delights where birds' nests
were to be had for the climbing and racing brooks would send ripples
over bare feet.
A dislike of himself began mixing with the longing even while it was
sharp enough to hurt. To want to escape the revived responsibility
had almost the yellow of treachery. He fought the temptation, thrust
it away. It would only go around a turning in his mind. He was
aware that it was there, its eye peeping, ear listening.
When the tea came Elsie poured it silently. She had gleaned
something of Robert's thoughts and they rankled. She had the feeling
of being one of two people on opposite sides of a gulf whose hands
strive to reach across it while only their fingers touch; a clasp
impossible.
How little letters could count during a long separation, letters like
theirs. She had put only the surface of her life into hers. His had
been mere bulletins; mostly he had relied on telegrams. "He is made
of bits of paper," Arturo had said. It almost seemed that he had
been right. She knew how reticent Robert was naturally in expression
of affection. So he had believed his telegrams sufficient, had
thought it unnecessary to keep dwelling on the love between them, not
realizing--as she knew now with the guilty sureness of her
needs--that love like any other thing must, to endure, be fed in some
way; by constant assurance when nothing closer is possible.
"He is disappointed in me," was her thought. "He feels miles away
from me. He isn't going to try to make love to me. Oh, I'm glad of
that!"
"There's one thing I haven't told you about, Elsie," Robert said,
after a cup of the excellent tea had brightened him. He had not
known how parched and travel-tired he was.
She shrugged in mild inquiry. "That--?"
"We are going to England to-night, and home that way."
This roused her violently. A dark flush lurched over her face. She
pushed her head forward. "To England, you say? Why, England?"
"Some of the directors met us at the ship, and we had a meeting, but
several weren't able to get away from London. As there's a bit of a
row on--something you wouldn't understand--we decided it would be
best for us all to get together once in London and have the thing
settled. I changed the tickets--yours and mine--at the office of the
French Line on my way to your place from the train. I want to get to
Dieppe to-night, reach London in good time to-morrow, and after a
week or ten days in England, we'll sail from Liverpool."
Her discontent showed frankly. For three years she had been her own
law, directed her life according to her mood,--the most whimsical.
Now she was moved as a pawn by a master player, and it was not
pleasant.
"You don't seem to realize that all my trunks are tagged for Havre."
"I'll change them in a few moments, my dear," he said with an easy
touch of authority. "Don't let that annoy you."
A blaze flashed through her. "But I don't like that long train
journey to Dieppe and then having to cross the Channel by the longest
way--an all-night journey. I did it once for economy, and I said I
never would again."
"It can't be helped now," he remarked peacefully and ate the last
slice of toast and marmalade with enjoyment.
She looked at her wrist watch. "We'll have to rush through dinner,
then rush for a train, then rush for the boat. That horrid boat!
That beastly, hateful, cheap tourist, all-night journey!" Her eyes
had a jet-black anger he had not seen in them before. And in truth
she had never felt before as she did at this moment,--a nervous
desperation; a longing to let herself go and weep wildly without
check.
"Does it really matter so much?" he asked, his brows lifted and held
so as he sharpened into new attention.
"I kept to your arrangements, Robert," Elsie went on unevenly, "and
got ready as you wished, although even then I had precious little
notice. Must you constantly change your plans?"
"Not I--business changes them."
"Well, it's hard enough without an entire upheaval like this. I'm
completely _bouleversé_. Why, I loathe the Channel even in the short
crossing from Calais!"
"Is there something you'd rather do?" he asked and tried to shut out
the voice now whispering with enticement of the truant's delights.
"Would you rather go on from France as arranged and meet me in New
York?"
Several seconds passed before Elsie could speak. A hush tightened
upon her, seemed to hold back her breath. "Go back, on this boat,
alone? But you've changed the tickets!"
"Well, not necessarily on this boat. Arranged this way, you need not
hurry. Send your trunks along as arranged now to Havre, to await
your orders there, and leave Paris for home about the time that I
leave England--that is, if you want to."
She began crumbling the bread to mask the quivering of her fingers.
Before her mind the picture of a mountain swept up mistily, an
odd-looking little house, with pale walls splashed with roses, on its
crest. And then the things of which Paula had spoken: the hooded
_serenos_ with lanterns; carnations everywhere; and the one mule cart
going down through the high solitude at a waddling pace. She heard
the gay voices of a mixed number in the small house,--Arturo's
guests; guitar music on the thin, chill, mountain air; the tinkling
of glasses. She did not see Arturo nor hear his voice. He was there
too pervadingly to appear as one of the details; back of every sound
he was whispering to her; his warm and quivering lips were seeking
hers.
She continued silent. She saw that it would not only be possible for
her to manage the visit to El Miradero; she could easily go; if she
spoke the words, Robert would in all likelihood urge her to go. And
yet with this sure knowledge came a distinct recoil from the thought,
a terror of it, so deep in her it seemed a little, far-off ghost,
watching.
"Don't go, don't go, don't go," she felt rather than heard it say.
"Why delay the break a few weeks? It will be even harder then, with
just so many more memories to torment you. Go home now. Be brave.
Go home now, or something may happen to keep you from ever going
home! You're not happy with Robert in this meeting, but you will be
later on. He is strong, he is kind, he is steadfast."
On the wake of this appeal from her underlying fear she recalled
Arturo's words about fate. If it were to be, it would be. And he
was right. She had not made the slightest effort to remain in Paris;
such a thing had seemed impossible. And here the power to do so was
in her hands, thrust into them by her husband. Surely this was fate?
She determined to test this belief; let it lead her, she to be
relieved from responsibility in the result.
"The apartment is given up," she said decidedly. "I couldn't stay on
there. An hour after I telephoned to Countess Verholst that I was
leaving, she rented it. No, I'd better go with you."
"If you'd rather. I want you to be contented." This seemed the end,
when Robert added: "You could, you know, keep out what trunks you'd
need and stay at the Ritz until you sail."
The Ritz! That added its temptation. She had not hoped ever to be
able to afford that. Yes, it would be chic to stop there for awhile
and then--maybe--start for Spain with Paula. Still she held to her
resolve, to what instinct counselled as wise.
"If I did that, Robert, I could go back on the '_Provence_,' with the
Vance Hamiltons. But I know Paula Vrain would keep insisting that in
the meantime I go on with her--You know Sidney Vrain in London--" she
broke off, "the shipowner?"
"Of course.--Insisting on your going--where?"
"With her to a house party at the--the Marqués de Burgos's place in
the Cantabrian mountains--not far into them--and they are in the
north of Spain, you know--only across the border from France, I
imagine.--" She paused, her heart beating with a queer burning.
Robert's eyes grew a bright blue; he tried not to make them eager.
But Elsie read the truth in them and remembered it often, afterward.
He looked the capable business man disentangling a difficulty with
ease.
"Well, go," he said. "Why not?"
"I might not get to New York until a good bit later than you. I
ought not to do that--now--when you're just back from Burmah. No--it
doesn't matter."
"I'll have to be about New York for a month or so before my next
opportunity is ripe, before we both get on the wing again, so a short
delay in your coming home would be a trifle. I haven't had time as
yet to tell you about my next move," he glowed. "Salary first--later
shares for me--if I can only get big results--!"
"Aren't you going to live in New York after this? Aren't you going
to give up business that takes you to the ends of the world? Surely
you're not going to keep on this way? Surely we'll live in New York?"
"Not yet. Maybe not for a year or two," he said crisply with a
shrewd, smiling anticipation. "South American mines--Venezuela--are
on the _tapis_ for us. I know the country well. I've already made
an offer for a big _hacienda_ just outside Valencia--what you'll call
a dream place and that you'll queen it over."
Again Elsie felt herself the pawn moved by the master player.
"Queen it in--Venezuela?" she murmured.
"Yes; while I go after the biggest thing yet. A million for me--no
less--if it's what I think it is."
"Venezuela!" she murmured with slow bitterness.
"Lovely place," Robert said again, and then hurriedly: "Well? We
haven't much time for deciding. What do you want to do? Stop on
here and go for your look at Spain? Or shall we keep to the English
plan?"
"Which would you rather I'd do? You must have some preference," she
urged, and felt the hush wind a veil about her as before.
"To be honest," said Robert, "it seems foolish to lug you over to
London when I'll be up to my neck in business all the time I'm there;
and a shame for you not to see Spain. That's what I think, but you
do just as you like."
CHAPTER VIII
Elsie was in the _Sud-Express, train de luxe_. She was travelling in
the most luxurious way possible. In fact, since Robert's persuasion
to this last, tangential diversion had come without her even seeking
it, she had had almost a week of the most delicious wallowing in
luxury. Certainly he was generous. What a sheaf of mauve-pink,
highly numbered franc notes he had given her,--thousands!
She could not help feeling that by a princely lavishness he had
sought to conciliate himself for his wish to get away from her. The
woman in her, while it did not crave him, objected to this; she did
not want any man who could mean anything to her to suggest an ease if
relieved of her, as Robert unconsciously had done. Yes, assuredly
the feminine antennae had sensed this. Liberal to a fault,
excessively attentive in his hurried arrangements for her comfort at
the Ritz, and then, but a few hours after his coming:
"Good-by, Elsie. Have a good time, my dear. I'll be up to my eyes
in business in London, and it will be one continual shop talk on the
ship. You'll get home in a few weeks with those Hamiltons you spoke
of. Just a little while and we'll meet in New York. I'll be at the
pier for you. Good-by, my dear. Get everything you want. Have a
good time. Good-by."
Well, here she was--free--tingling with that delight in danger that
everything connected with Arturo communicated to her, with at least
three thousand dollars in money in her bag as well as a roughly cut
emerald on the finest of chains, the sort of thing for which she had
often longed sinfully. Ah, the days at the Ritz! Luxury was sweet.
She had come to love the spacious Place Vendome from the sense of
power that she felt every time she stepped into it from the hotel.
She had come to have a sun-warmed, idling feeling in the Rue de la
Paix, that street of temptation to extravagance so unfittingly named.
Street of Peace, indeed? Never that before for her when economy had
strapped her, when she had had to produce the effect of modish
expensiveness on a small income. It had been delicious to have had
that changed as if by some Aladdin.
_Mannequins_ in the most important fashion workshops of the world had
paced before her, while she felt the self-complacency of the buying
customer. Several of the gowns, so beguiling in their shimmering
beauty they deserved a lovelier and a flowerlike name, she had
purchased right off the girls' adorable backs, of which all but a
fraction at the girdle was allowed to be seen. And she had brought
two with her. Yes, she had not been able to resist them, rough and
simple as Paula had described life at El Miradero to be.
The details of the excursion had been arranged quite easily. Having
seen Robert off on the train to Dieppe, she had telephoned to
Arturo's apartment, hoping to tell him of the change in her plans
before he left Paris, and had been able only to get Serafin. It was
the first time they had spoken since his unwisdom in the tea shop.
With overelaborate courtesy he stated that the _Señor Marqués_ had
already departed on the night express for Spain with his
cousins,--they to go on to Burgos, he to the mountains.
"I am to follow to-morrow and will then inform the _Señor Marqués_
that you are to arrive at El Miradero later in the week with Mrs.
Vrain," he said. "Mrs. Vrain knows everything necessary about the
journey, as she has taken it before, yet lest Mrs. Vrain might have
forgotten anything helpful I will, with your permission, send you at
once a note with full directions, madame."
The next day Elsie found Paula. She was in her boudoir, looking
astoundingly ugly with her hair in strings over a damp towel while a
master in the business smeared it with wet henna. Her maid was
already head down in a sea of packing.
"Ripping, my dear, that you can go! But I'm off to Bordeaux first,
you know," she had said, while managing to smoke between the dabs of
the man's fingers against her ears. "Duty visit--beastly--but
necessary. I'll cut it short and fly on to San Sebastian. You'll
find me waiting for you there--that is, I'll be there, unless I find
that I'll be able to motor still farther, to Bilbao, which is not
very far from the village from which that mule coach I told you about
goes up the mountain. So we'll leave it that way. If I'm not at the
station at San Sebastian, I'll be at Bilbao. Meanwhile turn yourself
loose for three or four days on the Rue de la Paix."
After that, Paula, having sketched all the phases of the journey, had
sent a footman to buy Elsie's ticket and to reserve a compartment for
her well ahead in the _wagon-lit_.
"It's nothing of a trip. One night on the train--then all the rest
is easy, dreamy, delicious," Paula had genially declared.
And so Elsie had found it. Through the golden evening the moments
had been reeled off as from well-oiled machinery, and she arose early
to watch for the first sight of the Pyrenees which, though appearing
while she was still in France, would be as the doorway into Spain.
When their pale, far, waving peaks came with a solemn sort of
suddenness out of the early mist, a warm feeling as of being greeted
went over her. Spain was no longer a country to be reached after a
journey. Nor was Arturo at a distance; he even seemed there, facing
her, smoking in his dreamy, Spanish way, his eyes with brooding anger
and misery fixed on her as they had been so constantly in the battle
that had gone on between them.
Through the days at the Ritz she had schooled herself in a new
determination. Nothing was going to happen during this visit that
would cause her regret afterward. She would be very sensible,
cautious. She would keep close to Paula and others of the guests,
avoiding any hours apart with Arturo. He must be made to see clearly
from the first moment that though she had come for this chapter with
him, it was the last chapter, _finis_ already written.
She gave a few moments' unmixed thought here to Robert, especially to
a letter from him that had reached her at the Ritz just before she
left; this told her that the business in London had been rushed
through, that he was sailing for New York that day. She also thought
very clearly, and quite without emotion, of his strength and kindness.
A look into the mirror of her vanity case brought a wondering,
half-amused shrug. How she had gibed at his criticism--and
behold!--it had borne fruit, for her face was but lightly touched
with the pencils and powders. Of course he had been right. The
habit of plastering one's self into a Pierrot can grow into a sort of
debauch without one's realizing it. She had a sense of his approval
the while she pictured him leaning on a deck rail, smoking a pipe,
the droll, little sun lines showing about his eyes.
This typical memory of him strengthened her resolve in wisdom. She
owed this to him for the royal trust with which he had sent her on
her way. And there was her life---perhaps a long one--to be spent
with him. It could only be bearable if she had nothing to hide that
she felt placed her outside his forgiveness. Yet from the mountain
epilogue she would get some happiness,--the pale and tender glow that
belongs to renunciation. This would spread through the secret niches
of her spirit, and in the years to come, as retrospection, it would
effuse a ghostly sweetness into gray days.
When Irun was passed and she neared San Sebastian, the excitement
born of novelty mixed with her sane and confident mood. Soon she
would be beside Paula in her motor; soon on the thin, chill, mountain
air that she had always felt in fancy from her first longing for this
experience, she would hear Arturo speak to her again, a cluster of
his holiday-making, Spanish friends about him, carefree days would
follow under his roof in a setting of beauty. Oh, life was an
alluring thing, a draught of many flavors that mingled to make
something so wonderful one would have nothing missing from it,--no,
not even the pain!
If, as some believe, powers for evil and good hover unseen about us,
some grim presence may have smiled darkly as Elsie rejoiced in the
thought of this mixed blend of emotions, seeing that she had missed
the vital truth about it,--how, with bitterest grief and
disappointment, life's sweet savor can endure, but only to that one
who remains firm in self-control; how strength is another name for
happiness; and weakness alone makes the slavery that slays hope.
Paula was not at San Sebastian. After breakfast, Elsie went on to
Bilbao on a branch line. Her anticipation had gone into a childish
depression. She had counted so surely on seeing the Englishwoman's
coarse, good-humored face turned to her in smiling welcome that
missing it sent the sun under a cloud. And now her thoughts fastened
on Bilbao with a running thrill of suspense.
Everything that she saw from the train that was typically Spanish
helped to divert her: the first _mantilla_; the first _carabinero_ in
blue uniform and white _shako_; squat, heavy-browed houses of
various, bright tints; the Chinese suggestion in the high cheek bones
of the Basque peasants, reminding her of Serafin, carnations in heaps
in venders' baskets; an oxcart, the animals yoked together with a
great bar hung with sheepskin, scarlet fringes dancing above their
eyes; a priest coming down a white road on a donkey. And in a larger
sense, wherever her eyes rested, the encompassing beauty!--roads
twisting like ribbons unwound from a great spool, deep glens,
twinkling streams, and above them flashing in sunlight the peaks of
the Cantabrian mountains toward which she was to journey. With all
of these impressions the meeting with Paula, a shadowy picture, would
dance in and out.
And now the long tunnel leading to Bilbao was reached. Elsie
gathered her smallest hand luggage and made ready, after the fashion
of the nervous and over-eager traveler, to quit the compartment at
the earliest instant possible. When the train stopped, her eyes
swept the waiting crowd for a familiar face, Paula's, perhaps at
once; if not, then her chauffeur's or her maid's. None of these came
out of the sea of features where every mouth was moving rapidly in a
chatter that made a noise like fine machinery, and the tension about
her heart was hardening to a questioning distress when she saw
Serafin.
He was but a few yards from the train as she descended, his hat
lifted above his swarthy, priestly face. She had not imagined that
he could ever bring her the relief which came now at sight of him.
But he represented reality at the end of this lonely dream-journey.
He was something that steadied her, made her see beyond him all the
rest of the experience waiting for her.
So she greeted him with a sparkling gladness and he received it
gratefully, with marked respect. To her first questions about Paula
he made hurried replies. He had not seen Mrs. Vrain, not yet; and
fearing some delay on her part had--on his own responsibility, not
having been directed to do so by the _Señor Marqués_--taken the
precaution to arrange for a few seats in a motor omnibus that took
passengers to where the mule coach started. And he would search for
Mrs. Vrain again as soon as he had seen the luggage through the
Customs, if madame would wait until he was at liberty. Meanwhile,
seated comfortably in the spot he selected, she could keep on the
lookout for her friend.
This Elsie did and so unsuccessfully that as the moments passed a
cold animosity toward Paula crept over her. It had been horrid in
the first place for her to have insisted that no maid but her own
Athénée would be necessary; while it would have been difficult for
Julie to have left her husband, Elsie felt she could have been
persuaded to go with her, and with Julie beside her nothing could
have made her feel as amiss as she did at that moment. It had also
been horrid of Paula not to have managed arriving at San Sebastian on
time, horrid to have treated a woman friend so. And here was the
second place of meeting that she had named, and she was late!
This was her mood when Serafin joined her, with porters bearing her
small trunk and dressing bag. He had attended to everything. He had
not seen Mrs. Vrain. She was not at the station. And now they must
hurry on.
"But we can't hurry on!" Elsie protested. "We can't go without Mrs.
Vrain!"
He gave a prolonged and peaceful shrug. "Of course, as you wish,
madame, but I would have to leave you. If I do not catch the coach,
there will be no way for me to go up until to-morrow at this time.
What I believe is this--Mrs. Vrain, detained by some trouble to the
car on the road and realizing her failure to meet your train, will,
no doubt, come on by a short cut over the mountains. You see,
madame? Why should you wait here since, in all probability, Mrs.
Vrain will not now come to Bilbao at all--as why should she, with a
powerful motor to simplify matters?"
"She might think that no one would come to meet me, and she'd look
for me here, no matter how late," Elsie said, not a flavor of hope in
the tone.
"Ah, no," he smiled gently, "she understands the _Señor Marqués_
better than that. And now you must decide, madame--we have not a
moment. I feel sure that when we reach El Miradero, Mrs. Vrain will
already be there."
It seemed to Elsie that decision was taken from her. Her brain was
humming. She could think of nothing better than what Serafin urged.
So while insisting on going with him for a last hurried look about
the station, from which the crowd had thinned to a few scattered
groups, she gave herself into his charge.
She was indifferent to the interesting notes on the rest of the
journey; they passed from her distressed mind without recording
themselves save in a cloudy way. In the motor omnibus, even
afterward in the loose-jointed, mountain coach with its five mules on
a string, its noisy jingling, and radiantly arrayed driver in green
velvet trousers and scarlet _boina_--all of which would have been a
delightful novelty to her in a happy mood--she sat pale and absorbed.
Her anger against Paula had changed to sensitive pain. She was hurt,
and deeply, at having been left to this solitary rõle in their
adventure. Surely this was the result of a rooted selfishness on
Paula's part, the worldly casualness that so easily can become
cruelty; really what might be called a social misdemeanor.
"If women were kind to each other, if they stood by each other as men
do by men, a mistake like this could not happen," Elsie thought.
Two hours later, when more than half of the journey was done, she
gave a violent start, fairly jerked from her reverie on realizing
that because of the ferment of her thoughts she had missed seeing the
one sure road out of the uncertainty,--how easily Serafin could have
gone on, leaving her to wait in the best hotel in Bilbao until Paula,
arriving at El Miradero by some shorter route, would have sent down
her car for her. Oh, she had been stupid! And now it was too late.
One of the Spaniards seated near her, pretending to read a paper but
really devouring her thistle-down blondness with glowing eyes, saw
her lips shake of a sudden as a child's do before a fit of weeping;
saw her turn and give a wild, lingering look of regret back along the
rough descent.
CHAPTER IX
One after the other the passengers had left the coach, and for more
than an hour Elsie and Serafin had been alone in it. He sat with the
red-capped driver who at times would hop down to even the sagging
mules and encourage them with a whooping chant that the gorges took
up until it seemed that a crowd of unseen runners surrounded them,
repeating it:
"_Ea! Ea! Arre! Mulo!_" And again: "_Ea! Ea! Arre! Mulo!_"
The shouts depressed Elsie, adding, as they did, to the strangeness
of the scene and her loneliness. Her eyes were observant now,
looking sharply to every turning, hoping it would give signs of the
journey's end. And what a long dragging journey it had been and
still was; a steady three hours' climb up the winding roads through
woods of beech and walnut, over rough bridges, over ravines, even
over mountain torrents. Through what solitudes! How removed from
human life--from any life!--for there seemed to be no birds in those
slanted woods, and hours had passed since the last tinkling of
cowbells was heard.
It had been scorching in the village from which they started, and at
the beginning of the ascent sunlight had filled the coach. Now the
interior was thick shadow. And when a clearing at one height was
reached, Elsie became aware that the gloom was not only from the
twilight. Clouds of smoky darkness moved rapidly over the sky and
lightning played almost continuously, though without any sound of
thunder, on the imperial peaks in the distance.
She took a seat nearer to Serafin, and as she spoke he turned.
"How quickly this storm has come," she said. Her voice had a wan
sound.
"It is not a storm yet, madame," he assured her. "Often this
darkness leaps into view up here and then plunges below. Sometimes
at El Miradero we look down on rain clouds that are sending torrents
into the lower valleys and not a drop is falling about us."
The words did not comfort Elsie. She drew back, coldness creeping
through her as she realized that it was the descent through the
valleys that interested her, calm weather down there that seemed at
the moment urgently important to her. This was curious. She
wondered about it. And as she sat in the gloom, her cold hands
locked, she saw that the thought of her return, perhaps a quick one,
had been with her while going upward. Before reaching El Miradero,
in spirit she had seen herself departing from it, because in spirit
she had some dark knowledge that Paula would not be waiting for her
there.
A small house, two-storied and low-browed, of crumbling yellow stone,
with roof of red tiles, and so built on the projection of a mountain
it seemed to cling by talons over perpendicular depths; a rude
balcony on the precipice side and on that which looked over a garden
facing the road; through several openings on this balcony--called
windows, although they were only big square cuts in the stone,
without glass--a dusky interior of velvety richness; salmon-pink,
apricot and crimson carnations, planted so that they seemed a flounce
of contrasting brilliance against the lower part of the yellow walls;
vines crawling about every casement. This was El Miradero.
Arturo came through one of the balcony doorways on the side away from
the abyss and stood looking down the mountain. The Paris pallor was
still on his face, but he wore country clothes that had seen hard
service--hob-nailed shoes and yarn stockings, corduroy breeches, a
jacket that hung hussar-fashion from one shoulder, a flannel shirt, a
soft velour hat pulled over the eyes. He looked abstracted, ill at
ease. After a dull gaze into the distance he vaulted over the
railing and crossed the garden.
Here, one of his two men servants, a lad of about seventeen, rested
against a wall from which a long view of the dipping road, around a
curve that took in miles, could be seen. "Nothing except the coach
has passed, _excellentisimo_," the boy said in answer to his
questioning look. "That turned the corner twenty minutes since."
"Very well. You need not wait, Aniceto." And when he had gone
silently on his _alpargatas_--those peace-producing, linen-soled
shoes that Spanish servants wear--Arturo lighted a cigarette and took
his place.
He felt puzzled. Since the early afternoon he had been expecting the
throb of Paula's motor up the mountain, a luncheon of the Spanish
dishes that she especially liked--fresh tunny fish in a steak, and
_pisto_, where eggs were fried in oil with peppers and
_pimientos_--waiting to be cooked the instant she arrived. If she
had met Elsie at San Sebastian as she had written him she meant to
do, in such a car as hers they should have arrived hours ago; if the
meeting had been deferred until Bilbao, they should have arrived at
about the same time or only a little later. Yet he was still
waiting. And now the mule coach was almost due--the crawling
coach--so it could only mean that Serafin was returning and probably
without news of them.
From the first he had been humble about Elsie's visit to El Miradero,
absolutely honest with Paula Vrain when he had begged: "Only delay
her return to America. I don't look beyond that. Probably I could
bear her going then, when I'd got used to it." This had seemed to
fail and he had left Paris believing he had seen Elsie for the last
time, only to have heard from Serafin that the Fate he believed in
had interposed and instead of sending her across the seas was
hurrying her to him in his beloved wilderness. So his disappointment
was two-edged since after several days of a covetous, morbidly
troubled sort of delight that had tried to keep the looming farewell
out of the picture, he was to suffer again. She had not come.
Something had happened. Or she had changed her mind, perhaps because
Paula had changed hers, and he was not to see her at all.
The driver's shouts and the clanking of the mules' harness came
clearly to him. He stepped into the road. As the coach came on a
last triumphant lurch to the upland valley where he stood, he saw
Serafin with the driver and--scarcely believing his eyes--saw beyond
him Elsie's face looking anxiously from the thick shadow. His body,
that had been chilled, warmed in a rush. Questions seemed to laugh
and scamper from him. No matter how, or why, she was there, in the
coach! _She was there_! Joy made him dizzy, and his face a flash of
happiness as he pulled on his coat, he ran to meet her.
It is a curious phase of intense infatuation that in trying to recall
the expressions and tricks of manner of the one beloved, memory will
often fail altogether, so that a meeting will strike with the
freshness of a first, entranced look; an effect of singular power.
This unexpected thing cast its spell over Arturo so that he gazed,
stilled, almost astounded, at Elsie, feeling her charm as no
livingness of fancy had given it to him.
She was an appealing sight. Her delicately cut face was fatigued,
and through a film of veiling and above the high collar of a blue
military cloak it suggested a flower dimmed by travel dust; from the
pale hair coiled against her ears, wisps glittered on the air like
blown corn silk; as she moved a lovely fragrance came from her
clothes and mixed with the spice of a huge bunch of carnations that
she had bought from a peasant on the way and held pressed against her
breast. She seemed to him an accumulation of all sweet and beckoning
things.
Yet as the details of courtesy make the sign-manual of high breeding
to the Spaniard, Arturo instinctively kept sight of those in which he
had been reared, conquered the visible signs of his lover's heart.
With a striking gravity, and bareheaded, he helped Elsie to the
ground. He took the flowers from her and gave them to Aniceto, who
had come running at sound of the coach's arrival. Holding both her
hands he lifted them slowly, and in turn, to his lips.
"Welcome, Elsie, to El Miradero," he said with charming quietude and
sincerity, and then glowingly in Spanish: "My house is yours! My
heart is beneath your feet!"
There was silence as she waited for him to say that for which she had
ceased to hope.
"Paula! She's not here?" The tone was thin, repressed.
"Not yet," and as the rain started with violence he put his hand
under her arm and raced her in a joyous way through the garden.
At Elsie's question illumination had spread through Arturo. He had
seen his last moment with Paula at the Longueval house when she had
said: "I mean to help you--thoroughly. That's the way I am;
absolutely indifferent, or a mistress of detail who spares no
pains!"--and he had seen the watching smile she had kept upon him as
she went down the stairs. Paula was not coming; probably had never
meant to come. He pushed the troublesome thought away so that he
might delight to the full in one,--that Elsie was at his side. Let
events take what course they might, nothing could alter that. She
was with him again.
"Paula is late; that's all," he thought it well to add, as they
reached the door on the balcony.
"Late?" Elsie echoed with accusation. "She has failed me everywhere!"
"Well, isn't she always full of whims and surprises? By the time
you've changed for dinner, she'll come tearing into sight up the
mountain."
She jerked her arm from him and stopped sharply on the threshold to
look back. The downpour was hissing through a deepening fog. The
terraces of mountains were smoky monoliths except when revealed by
the lightning, now continual blue-white glares. She looked down at
the valley she had left, and it had gone,--in its place a black pit.
"Never mind the storm! We'll shut it out! You must have some
_refresco_ and then I'll take you to your room. It's off Paula's so
that you two can have long bedroom talks at night!"
With excited happiness he took off her wet cloak and drew her to a
small table where a queerly-shaped jug of cold wine with sliced fruit
in it and a tray of sandwiches stood. As she had not eaten since
breakfast a weary sort of hunger helped the weight on Elsie's spirit,
and at his gay command she both ate and drank a little. Afterward,
when he opened a door for her on the upper floor, he paused there and
again made her welcome in the gravely gracious, Spanish way. She
listened, and from her under-sense of trouble could not reply.
"You are at home--'_su casa_'--as we say," he continued wistfully,
and looking very boyish in the loose, rough clothes, his black hair,
usually so sleek, roughened over the brows, while he held her hand
gently in both of his as if it were a small bird he guarded there.
"You must be very happy, Elsie, at El Miradero!"
She smiled, nodded jerkily and went in. At once the set look and
steady step that her will had managed fell away, and in an apathetic
sort of confusion she stood with her weight against the closed door,
seeing the odd room only through a blur. Later its plaster walls
painted a bright blue, the spangled shrine beside the rough, iron bed
that yet was covered by a wine-colored velvet cope embroidered with
gold and evidently centuries old, made their appeal to her. Not now.
She left the door. Still with her hat on, she sank on a chair beside
the trunk that, at Serafin's direction, had been conveniently placed
and opened for her. For a long time she remained so, chin on her
doubled hand, hardening herself, struggling for composure.
One thing became as flawlessly clear as sunlight on a steel shield;
if Paula did not arrive at El Miradero, nothing would win her to
remain there for the night. She would wait for one hour. If by that
time Paula had not come,--then the journey down the mountain!
The storm seemed to reply to this resolve with screeching derision.
_Go back_? As memory showed her the plunging and twisting roads,
edging ravines, over which she had been dragged for hours and then
made a picture of the hobgoblin pandemonium they would be on a night
like this, she stood up, her hushed face turned to the closed, wooden
shutters that had need of their strong latches. The rain was
attacking them with the noise of loosened rivers; the wind had split
into contrary gales with the raucous voices of Communistic hags.
And after she had stood still for a while listening to the clamor,
the inner silence of the house suddenly took on some meaning full of
cloudy trouble. She opened the door and stepped out, with no clearer
purpose than to find Arturo, confide her vexation, and get his
promise to have her taken back to Bilbao as soon as she felt she must
go.
Turning a corner she found herself on a rudely built little gallery
that overlooked the living room. She was in deep shadow; from below
the lovely beaming that mixed firelight and candlelight give swept
up. Yet instead of hurrying down she hesitated there, keeping well
out of view. She did this without a defined reason, while through
her surreptitious sort of stealth some separated thought was trying
to get at her mind, seeking assurance, as a small, worried thing will
hunt for a corner into which it can crawl.
The sounds of the house were soft and came to her clearly here:
servants speaking; Serafin's answer to a distant call from Arturo;
later, and a little nearer, another command from Arturo; and again
Serafin's reply. No other voice than these four. The mole-like
uneasiness had clear outlines,--there was no evidence of the other
guests; there had been no mention of them.
She went close to the rail, from which she had a good view of the
room. This was beautiful, its mountain simplicity mixed with odd,
rich notes making for comfort. The solid part of a tree blazed on a
deep hearth and gave out hissing paroxysms when spray came down the
chimney. The wide chairs were of planks. There were couches with
skins over them. A large desk that faced the wall, its high back to
the room, seemed an early Spanish model of oak, black from age and
with the deep-seated glow of ancient things. Another striking effect
came from the table; though but an oblong of heavy planks, its
appointments, even to shaded candles and flowers in small vases, were
fitting for a formal dinner in Paris. Her look was held by it. It
was set for three. Paula was of course the third, and she was still
absent. Under that roof, then, no one was with Arturo but the men in
his employ and herself.
A dismayed moment engulfed her. She came out of it shaken, her
breath difficult. Paula had fed her with every sort of lie. They
could only have been a bait to get her to El Miradero and find
herself alone there with Arturo. Paula's lies? Were they not also
Arturo's? Had Paula been anything more than his cat's-paw? A
burning hatred of the woman swept over Elsie. When, as the feeling
ebbed, she struggled to hate Arturo too, all she could feel was a
disappointment that filled her like a sickness and turned the
necessary accounting with him into a thing of misery.
She had taken a few steps toward the stairs when his voice came up
and with the ring of such sharp anger in it, she drew back and waited
in the darkness. She saw him cross the room and come to full view
before the fire. He had dressed informally. In his dinner jacket he
was again the man she had known in Paris, but the look on his face, a
cold sternness with perplexity, was new to her. His gesture
summoning Serafin to come nearer--an abrupt jerk of his thumb toward
himself--was contemptuous rebuke.
She saw him look into the Basque's face, and it was plain that with a
frozen sort of anger he had begun accusing him of something for which
Serafin, with suave shrugs and the constant outspreading of his dark
hands, was making respectful excuses. Their Spanish was rapid and
subdued and her knowledge of the language slight. She could only
watch; only glean from the constant recurrence of her name and
Paula's that Arturo was enraged at Serafin for something connected
with them both.
Her disquiet lessened under the strength of her longing to acquit
Arturo of treachery; this gave her heart a big fullness. And when
one phrase in Spanish that she could understand came from him
cuttingly, she rejoiced:
"Paula is a devil," Arturo said. "She is nothing less than a devil
to have done this! And you---you, are no better!"
While he was still speaking he saw Elsie, except for her cloak
dressed as when she left the coach, hurrying down the narrow stairs
to him. As he went to meet her and drew her to the fire, Serafin
went out.
"I understood a little," Elsie said, the flare showing up the
desperation of her face. "You'll get me out of this, Arturo. From
what you said to Serafin I know it's all Paula's fault--why she did
it I don't know. I'm only glad it was not you who tricked me into
coming here--" The words broke. "Your only guest!"
Her look implored him to contradict this. His silence was a reply.
"Am I--the only one here?"
"Paula told you that there were to be others?"
"She said you were to have a house party. From the very first, she
said that!"
"I never intended it. I never told her so. She must have been
enraged because I wanted you here. She's tricked us both--laughing
at us both."
Elsie sat down heavily. Furious weeping jolted over her. "What a
cat!" she blurted. "Cruel, smiling cat! I hate her!"
"So do I," Arturo said in a still, icy way. "I'm angry--and I'm
sorry. You do believe me?"
"I do--oh, yes," she said as well as she could, adding on a hurried
breath, "Never mind that now. What are we to do? You must do
something--get something to take me down to that place we started
from, and I'll stay there if I can't go on to Bilbao to-night."
As instead of moving he grew more grave, she tugged at his hands.
"Don't you hear, Arturo?"
"I have to tell you--" he muttered and stopped; the lids came down
over his somber gaze.
"What?" she asked with dread. "You must get something to take me
down--now! I won't stay for dinner. I want to go. Oh, do hurry,
Arturo--please! I'll call Serafin," and she started toward the door.
"Elsie!"
The ringing word brought her back. A desperate quiet had come to
him. "You have been deceived quite enough. Even Serafin deceived
you, for he knew very well he should not have brought you up here
while there was any doubt of Paula's coming. He knew very well that
there is no way--" and now his hands sank with force upon her
shoulders as she stood lifelessly before him, "--no way by which you
could go back until to-morrow morning."
"No way?" The words formed on her lips without sound.
"Even without this storm--no possible way, Elsie!"
"I don't know what you mean!--Not true!" This, though an unsteady
breath, was a frenzied denial.
"If I could only make it not true!"
The sincerity in the tone was unquestionable, and Elsie's eyes became
pools of abject dread. "Then I'm not to get away from here
to-night!" blurted from her in such entreaty and panic he forced her
to a chair and knelt beside her.
Elsie scarcely saw him. The most uncannily enlightening feeling she
had ever known filled her; an encompassing suspense. She tried to
struggle through it. Surely there was no need of it? The situation
in which she found herself--the result of Paula's jealous venom and
Serafin's malice for his humiliation at her hands--was distasteful,
but could be accepted sensibly and lived through?
Instantly she knew that the fear which had come upon her was for
something beyond this; it had a clairvoyant whisper that seemed to
mourn over some dark and chilling consequence of the situation, and
from which only flight could save her.
"I am going--I am!" she kept stuttering in answer to this urging, her
face, with a groping bewilderment on it, turned away. "I must go! I
must--must--"
"Ah, listen, Elsie--and dear, try to be sensible. As soon as you
were in your room," Arturo went on in a quieting voice, "I sent
Aniceto up to the only house within reach, a place where they have a
motor. It was shut up; the family had left on some excursion or
perhaps gone back to Burgos until later on. That was my only hope.
You see this is an uncivilized place, and this is a rude, little
house, Elsie. I come here for solitude and have never before needed
horses.
"The coaches, then, are all we have to depend on. There will not be
another until about three or so in the morning--it goes down at that
time so that people can get a morning train comfortably, after
breakfasting in one of the valley towns. Until then nothing comes
this way except Eduardo, a man on a donkey, who carries letters to a
wayside post box at the foot of the mountains. He is made use of
this way as a messenger because he has work on the railroad that
takes him down late at night--but he is useless in our present
difficulty. I am making all this clear to you, my darling, because I
want you to make the best of what cannot be helped. You must not be
afraid. You will stay here and trust me, Elsie. For you can--trust
me!"
And then Elsie saw that what threatened her would have its beginning
in herself. As he spoke, Arturo's hands had crept from her shoulders
to her throat, a furtive, hypnotic persuasion in their fondling
touch. The familiar, imperious fire in him she could have steeled
herself against. The something unselfish in his concern for her, in
his anger at the tricks played upon her, a certain elevation in his
bearing, a touch of sorrow, were new appeals that made her feel she
was tenderly loved.
And assuredly at that moment only fair things were in Arturo's
heart,--"the dignity and loyalty and the love of God" of his race in
the ascendant. He believed what he said. And Elsie believed it,
too, but saw what lay dangerously close to it--his hunger for her
crying out in his touch and her ungovernable response to it--rejected
by her mind, luring her senses with the dark pull of a drug. Her
enemy was within.
She broke from him heavily and on feet that seemed weighted reached
the stairs, fright in her crowding words.
"You know I can't stay here--you know that as well as I do. And I
don't want to, I don't want to! I must get to Bilbao--or some
place--there must be some way I can get down the mountain--I'll go,
if I have to walk!"
After she had gone Arturo remained in a graven sort of stillness.
Such an intent and searching look shot into his eyes, as he stood
gazing up at the spot where Elsie had vanished, it seemed as if some
other had slipped into the darkness, was challenging him, calling
down to him through it. The whole effect of his face changed. It
grew grim, driven, concentrated in a demand. The wilful lines so
faint about the mouth showed like dug-in wires, flattening it. An
avid gleam came to his eyes.
This absorption lasted a few moments. As a hard shudder went over
him he seemed to surrender to some force that drew him on slowly to
the stairs. After a pause there he went up them, his step determined.
In the passage, a few yards beyond Elsie's door, a candle burned in a
hanging lantern whose glass was tinted the Spanish yellow and crimson
arranged in mosaics. Under this he waited restfully until Elsie came
out of her room. She had on her military cloak, her smallest bag in
her hand.
At sight of him in that attitude, his breathless, tormented, resolute
look fixed upon her--a look without the slightest kinship to the
lovely kindness of his eyes when she had left him--she could not
speak at first. He gave her no help. Through his silence the
thought came to her that he felt no need of further persuasion;
silence and waiting were his allies, and enough.
She began a rush of fluttering words: "I'll go on.--Send all my
things to Paris! I'll go back to the Ritz!--You'll come with me,
Arturo, and show me the way? You'll help me get down, won't
you?--won't you?"
He took her arm in a gentle yet directing grip and led her to the end
of the passage where one of the fastened window shutters showed.
"I want you to listen to the storm," he said with monitory quiet.
"Listen to it."
She stood in silence beside him. He felt her tremble, saw her eyes
shrink as if from a sun too strong. The whole world seemed at war
outside, women wailing, and hoofs ringing, and soldiers attacking,
and fiends whistling in some abominable triumph.
"But if you helped me, if you came down with me--couldn't we
manage--somehow?" She urged the words out with a lifeless sort of
obstinacy.
His answer was to force up the heavy bar on the shutter and
recklessly hold it open. The wind, with the quality of sheet iron,
tore in through the glassless space and struck them back, the rain
went over their heads like the wash of a big wave; and this during a
second. As Arturo fought the gale and fastened the shutter again,
Elsie sank against the wall. She stood there, gasping, wiping her
face, the bag fallen to her feet. Arturo, too, had pulled a big
handkerchief from his sleeve, used it as if it were a bath towel and
shook the water from his hair, while breaking into laughter with
cries in Spanish.
Mad laughter it was. Elsie had never heard anything even faintly
like it from him before, for in his pleasure he had never been gay,
never frivolous like their companions. It seemed that the prancing
in of the wild night, striking him, had acted as a challenge, called
to him to be like it, conquering all, afraid of nothing. In the
mixed glow from the lantern he seemed a storm-mad faun, drunk with
the urge of his own dancing blood.
Still laughing, deadly pale, and with overbright eyes he came
straight to her and curved his hands about her face. As he looked
down at her he grew serious.
"My darling," he said with slow determination, a glowing clearness.
She tore at his fingers. They seemed molded to her head.
"Don't," came on a shudder, a breath, for with his touch and the
blows of his heart against her own the peril within herself had taken
on a stifling sweetness. "Oh, please--remember! Oh, what am I to
do?"
This stammering fear he answered by crushing her to him, his arms
trembling in yearning, hard in decision. "You are to remain with me
here, _cara--mi cielo_--my adored and treasured love!"
"No!"
"No?" He cried this out with a return of the mad laughter and kissed
her cheek. "No?" he asked mockingly as he pulled the pin from her
hat and flung both aside. In a relentless way he pressed her face
down and his lips swept over her hair, her ear, her throat. "No?" he
asked again, this time very gravely, with a note of pain. His
beautiful mouth, thirsting, hung just above hers. "Do you say that
to me, Elsie? If you do, I will let you go." He waited still, his
breath broken. "Can you say it? Ah, can you, Elsie? ... Can you?
..."
She could not. Under the stealing, agonizing, enfeebling delight of
that delayed kiss, the will to resist--a struggling light--went out,
and darkness like a flood rushed in. Elsie seemed drowning in it
when Arturo's lips at last burned down on hers and kept them through
wild words that were almost without sound:
"I'm not going to lose you--going to keep you! I didn't seek this!
It's come and I'll seize it. It is our destiny!--Oh, I love
you--_how_ I love you! I love you too much! Above all in life, in
all the world I adore you! I've been sick for you, torn for you.
You shall not go! It's no use--how can I be different from what I
am?"
For a time he held her with overmastering greed, the red and yellow
stains from the lantern dancing on their pale faces, the storm
knocking and chuckling and whistling around them. Elsie grew weak in
his arms. There was triumph in being so conquered. This was life!
This was all! Without it there was nothing!
The intoxication lasted only a moment. The unescapable despondency
that flavors all collapse came to her as from some warning wail
rising above the clamor in herself. She drew away from Arturo, with
eyes growing sick in her awakening.
"Why have you done this?" her whisper came. Her hands grasped her
surging head. There was a dreadful note in the question that
followed: "Where are you taking me?"
CHAPTER X
And that dreadful note of utter helplessness in the voice he loved
came at Arturo with such reproach it steadied him. With a struggle
he opposed the feeling that held him as with a beast's claws.
Ghastly now and trembling, he yet touched Elsie very gently.
"Dearest, don't look at me so--ah, don't look at me like that!"
In an assuring way he drew her to a rough bench that ran beside the
wall, and for a moment they sat side by side in silence. Arturo only
held her cold hand, lifting it once to his face with a scrupulous
tenderness; and once he touched his lips with their held-back,
excited breath to her wet sleeve. His beauty had taken on new
power,--the splendor of line and light of a questing tiger. His eyes
showed the fever that tormented him kept brooding under heavy and
languid pulses while he comforted her.
"You are not afraid of me now, darling? You don't think I would ever
be unkind to you?"
The dire appeal had gone out of Elsie's face, leaving in single
strength a passionate adoration. As before, it was his gentleness,
his care that fed her craving for him. In an unexpected way,
appealing as a child's, she took her hand from him and put her arms
about his neck. As he waited with a look of amazed and humble joy,
for it was her first impulsive caress, she drew his face down to her
and kissed him,--this also in the way of a trustful child.
"I do love you, Arturo," she said very earnestly. "I can't leave
you--"
"_Preciosa_! My very heart!"
"All the fight has gone out of me. But it's the afterward--all that
will come afterward--that frightens me. Oh, make me see. Show me
where I am going!" She laid her face on his shoulder, hiding it, and
as his lips touched her neck a rapture went through her that ended in
a shudder. "I'm a coward," broke from her, still with her face down.
"To be wicked, one ought to be fearless."
"Is this being wicked?" he asked into her ear that through the loose
hairs veiling it was like an opening blossom. "Wouldn't it be more
wicked to leave me when you love me and go away to live with a man
you do not love?" She lifted her head and looked at him with
defenseless eyes that showed her groping for truth. "You did not
think of that, ever?" he asked with dreamy reproach.
A light came out of the trouble in Elsie's face. Her arms tightened
about him. "Then you do see, Arturo, the one thing that's plain to
me--if I stay here with you I can never go back to Robert?" She
stood up, her hands against her wan cheeks, dragging at them.
"Never, never, never will I go back. I'd even pray never to come
face to face with him again," she whispered, and after a pause as she
bent down, her hands upon his shoulders, added with almost a sad
desperation: "My old life I'll throw away forever. Whatever happens
to me, going with you--whatever I become--there will be no one but
you!"
The words checked Arturo. They, and the feel of her holding fingers
again swept a memory of Paula's words to him: "Will you take my
advice and let her alone? Or, will you risk having her on your hands
for life?" This was what she had meant. Gazing up at Elsie he saw
also unaccustomed heights that would demand unselfishness, and to
which, holding her, he might be drawn. Justice and pity strove
within him, urging truth.
Only briefly. After the fashion of his race, intensified by his
manner of life, he delayed meeting the issue; later he would see more
clearly. Just now it was enough that Elsie was like a wonderful
flower that the storm had broken and blown to him. Her falling hair
a glittering mist over brow and cheeks; her eyes luminous in the sad
gaze of one demanding its secret of Fate; the spiritualized pallor of
her skin, her charming hands, so like a child's, framing her face;
the waiting breath upon her parted lips--all the gold and white of
her--these made him know a worship to the limits of his nature, acted
as a spur upon his refined and corrupted mind. He knew, too, of the
ardors within her fragility, hidden there until he had made her love
him; that he had found there like fire under snow. And there would
be still deeper ecstasies--oh, wonders!--that he would arouse as the
practised musician calls multiform rhapsodies from wood and strings.
Self-discipline? Renunciation? No! He had never quite risen to the
call of what was good in him, and he could not now, could not escape
from the goad of his passion for her. The last wavering reflection
vanished, and he was only aware of the drumming blood in his brain, a
conquering languor.
"Let us finish this and not speak of it any more," he said, and made
her sit down again. He knelt before her, his arms loosely about her
waist. "When I say that I want nothing but your happiness, can you
doubt me?" he asked and drew back a little so that she could look
fully into the shadows and glow of his eyes. "Now tell me what
troubles you?"
She grew calm at his words. "There's my husband. I can't forget
him. I can't play with him, Arturo, or cheat him. I know that lots
of women can. In Paris we both knew women who did. I cannot. I
can't be untrue to my husband and ever see him again."
"Well, then--let me ask you--will you grieve for not seeing him
again?"
"Not if you love me--" and now her face showed the bite of conscience
through the glamour he had brought there, "not if you _really_ love
me. That could make it seem--to me--right."
"I shall always love you," he said simply. "Do you think any woman
has ever been to me what you have been? Have I endured a hell of
failure for a year for any other and still hung about her, suffering,
as I have for you? I never have. I shall love you as long as I
live! Does this satisfy you?"
She gave him a searching gaze. "Yes," she sighed, and yet content
was missing.
"I can't say that we can ever arrange our lives--conventionally--you
understand? There's my family--my mother--I am dependent on her.
Also, she is old and loves me very much, as I do her. Then, as I've
often told you, she has certain beliefs and feelings that are as her
life blood and which I dare not, would not wish ever to offend. But
my sweet one, so precious to me, there is the whole world with many
beautiful quiet places or gay bright cities where we could live
together and snap our fingers at formal society and its rules. Would
this be enough for you?"
He moved to one side, completely releasing her, and leaning his arm
on the bench looked up at her in a patient, numbed way. "You see, I
will not try to persuade you with my emotion--ah, dearest, which is
so terrible!--I will let you decide for yourself. Would what I offer
be enough for you?"
"Oh, yes; oh, yes," she said and shuddered as if joy frightened her.
As he had fully expected, it was she, rewarding his self-control, who
sought him. Her hand smoothed his cheek. After kissing the
hollowed, rosy palm he tucked it against his throat. "I understand
that you can't promise more, Arturo. It would be a happiness that
seems too great--if--if only--"
"If! Well, dear? What?"
"If only Robert--knew!"
"He will know, in time."
"If he knew--now!" she said wistfully, desperately.
A boyish laugh broke from Arturo. "_Madre mia_, I'm glad he
cannot--that we have not yet miracles! You are a foolish child,
Elsie, if ever there was one," and he gave her a sudden, kindly
caress. "You seem sometimes not more than ten years of age. Nothing
could make your husband know--now. Not unless you have mastered
telepathy. Have you?" He smiled up at her. "Or what do you mean?"
"Oh, I don't know exactly. But if he knew--if I could have told him
before I left him, then I'd feel different--true. Then there would
not be one regret. I feel guilty--until I tell him."
The poetry went out of Arturo's face. A look of blind rage swept
over it. "I never heard of such a thing. We are to remain here as
two strangers, I suppose, until we are sure that Mr. Robert Maury has
had time to receive your letter in which you tell him that you are
leaving him for me. Can you expect me to consent to that?" He
sprang up and looked down at her with grave, cold eyes. "You are
playing with me. It amuses you to torment my soul."
As she stared back at him she had the harassed look of one trying to
hold to a tune through a clash of bells. "No," she murmured, "no.
But at least, as you've said--I can write!" Her face clearing, she
came quickly to him as he still stood with rigid arms and somber
gaze. "That would do, Arturo!--yes, I'd be satisfied if I wrote to
Robert, if I knew that from the moment I made my decision, from the
very beginning, my letter telling him the truth was on its way." She
laid her head with pleading on his shoulder. "Don't be angry! I
suppose I am foolish--do I seem foolish?"
"Very," he said, and not able to resist the appeal of her closeness
let his arms fasten about her. "I can't understand your thinking of
this man at all since you love me as you do. There isn't a woman
living of whom I could think in such a moment!"
"But you did," Elsie urged gently, looking up. "You thought of your
mother."
Just the mention of his mother in that casual way by a stranger and
the something in him that often had baffled Elsie was plain for a
moment in a look that was a spirit-quelling thing. It intrenched him
at once behind a rampart of pride, made her conscious of all the
proud quarterings over his doors.
"That was different." This was conclusive as his hold upon her
loosened. After a pause he added with formality: "I had to
explain--some things. You had not the same reason. It is not
necessary for you to guard your action so that you may take support
from your husband. There's not that need of consideration of him.
But perhaps I am wrong?" he asked with a slowness that was cruel.
"It may be your intention to continue to take an income from him?
Such a thing to me would be unnatural, detestable--but I am unused to
American ways."
Elsie had retreated, staring at him, her look appalled. "How could
you say that? It was horrible to say that to me. Oh, it was a
brutal, hateful thing," she almost sobbed.
"It was!" Arturo cried and flung his head back violently in
self-contempt. He came to her, penitent, shaken with tenderness.
"Forgive me, my dearest. I have a bad temper! I am a Spaniard, you
know, so sometimes I get into a dreadful rage. It doesn't last," he
smiled, "and it's because I am so terribly in love with you that I
feel sheer insanity when you speak of any man but me!" He led her to
the door of the bedroom and took her face in his hands. "Am I
forgiven?"
"Yes, of course."
"Then write your letter, if you wish. Bring it down when you come to
dinner--and hurry, for it is past ten. Eduardo shall have it when he
goes down the mountain in about an hour. I'll tell Serafin to have
the lantern hung out that is the signal for him to stop--"
"Serafin!" rang in her thoughts, but she did not utter it. Having
kept secret the experience with the Basque that had made her dislike
him, she shrank from telling it now.
"Wear your prettiest gown," Arturo whispered. "Have you what I
love--something gold?"
"No. Only one white and one black."
"Wear the white." He bent her head back. "Bride's color," he
whispered, and for a moment there was nothing upon the earth but his
arms, his loved breath and lips, and the eyes that she saw close as
if by the weight of his delight.
"Go." His voice was smothered, his smile much like a distracted
boy's. "Go quickly--and come back to me quickly. I want every
moment!"
Arturo returned to the living room. Except that he went rapidly,
there was little sign in his face of his wild joy. A manner that
could be a mask when with inferiors was usual, easy to assume. He
lighted a cigarette before giving the loud clap of the hands that
summoned servants.
Aniceto glided in at one door, Serafin came gravely from another.
After brief instructions to the boy about serving the long-delayed
dinner and which he fled at once to carry out, Arturo looked
peacefully at the Basque. His earlier displeasure was still felt
between them and showed in an excessive impassiveness on Serafin's
side as he waited, a conciseness on Arturo's when he spoke.
In the most natural way he stated that Mrs. Maury was going to remain
with him indefinitely. She was sending an important letter to her
husband, by Eduardo, and Serafin would see that the lantern was
immediately hung out. Aniceto and the cook were all that would be
required by him at El Miradero for the present. Serafin would
therefore leave. He must take the morning coach, and in Bilbao rent
a touring car for Arturo for a month. He would return with it and a
chauffeur. Going on in it past El Miradero to the _Señora
Marquésa's_ country house, he would assure her of Arturo's
well-being, and without going into details, make her understand that
neither she nor his sister must visit him; that instead, Arturo would
motor over within the week to spend the day with them. This done,
Serafin was to send the car back to El Miradero while continuing
where he pleased on a vacation,--to Burgos or if he wished still
farther, to pay his family a visit. When Arturo needed him he would
be recalled. For to-night he was to wait at table--and--well, that
was all.
Serafin received these directions without the slightest change of
expression. He bowed deeply, saying he would put out the lantern at
once and would be ready, as the _Señor Marqués_ wished, to depart by
the coach. He also begged to say that he regretted keenly having
displeased the _Señor Marqués_, yet assured him that in urging his
guest to come on alone to El Miradero he had been thinking of his
master's contentment only,--only hoping to bring about, for his sake,
exactly what had transpired. And the _Señor Marqués_ could count on
him as on his own right hand, until his last breath.
After listening, while musingly smoking, to these assurances of
fidelity, Arturo thanked him sincerely though in the briefest way.
Serafin bowed profoundly several times and went about his duties.
There had not been a trace of Aniceto's servility or haste on
Serafin's part in this little scene, nevertheless his loyalty and
veneration were clear to Arturo. He understood the erectness and
dignity of his Basque foster brother; it did not in the slightest way
alter the fact that if Serafin could at that moment have chosen his
station in life, he would have been, like Arturo, an _hidalgo_ of
Spain rather than king of any other land.
CHAPTER XI
The letter to Robert was the dominant thought to Elsie through the
sweet and stinging tumult of her mind. Only when it was on its way
would a dogging sense of treachery to him leave her. Sending it, she
would be as honest as time and distance made possible. Sending it,
she would burn all her boats, their flames the signs that the river
that flowed between what she had been and would be in the future,
could never be crossed--unless--unless the man she loved would,
sometime, marry her. And even then? ... Ah, even then, would there
not always be her public defiance of law,--a shadow that would never
down while eyes could look at her with memory of it?
At this thought, as she sat bent over the desk and tried to write,
words from her mother's letter recurred to her, and for a few seconds
the shallow, pretty face seemed beside her, but twisted in rage as
the lips echoed their written warning: "You fool--!"
Elsie gave the whisper of a desperate laugh. Well, an honest fool.
There was pride in knowing that. And with the feeling judgment of
her mother grew hard.
As they come to the drowning, so in this moment of critical venturing
a murked procession of pictures of her childhood rose before Elsie.
She saw herself tolerated or pushed aside by Nina Race, the singer;
frostbitten in her childish soul with her glacial aunt; never with a
home; never loved; at last hurried into marriage when so young with
the first man that wanted her because it meant her mother's escape
from her as an incubus,--and an incubus that stood for a calendar
showing what Nina's approximate age must be. No love anywhere. Ah,
that was it! Had she had the love on which most children ripen
sweetly and which with her had always been an absolute need of the
ingrained and suppressed ardor of her nature, it was not likely that
the feeling that filled her now--like the vertigo of heights--would
have found her ready, at last, to pay its heavy price.
Her pen lay motionless on the paper while she followed the trail of
self-defending thought to Robert. A man of splendid qualities, his
complete mastery of himself had been a numbing, fretting thing to
her. There had always been a wall between them. Always the flame in
herself had been left to burn like a candle in a bare and untenanted
room. Although she had borne him a child, it was the child that she
had passionately loved. (Ah, had her darling lived! How nearly had
losing it taken her sanity!) For its father her feeling had been, at
the strongest, a grateful devotion mixed with eagerness to stand
level with him as a comrade. She was sure he cared deeply for her,
in his way; a careful, self-watching way, so that often he would seem
to have retreated into some inner house with doors shut, she to be
satisfied--knowing he was near--to sit in its vestibule or wander in
its garden. So as he had never spent himself prodigally in loving
what he had, neither would he, she felt sure, in regret for what he
would lose. He would not miss her much. At their recent meeting he
had felt that she had become a light sort of woman and had been glad
to get away from her. When, from her own written words, he would see
her as both light and soiled, he would forget her easily.
As to his possible meaning to herself once her letter was gone? She
tried to see this from every side. He had been little more than a
shadow to her for years; a shadow that she had known would instantly
have taken on enduring substance had she called to him, or sought
him, needing him; a shadow that had generously provided for her from
a distance; yet, not one that had ever winged to her over the space
between them the knowledge of a hungry heart that waited, aching for
the moment that would give her again to him. And so from now on he
would become merely a less distinct shadow until soon even that much
of him would go and nothing of the past would waver across her
sunlight at all.
She wrote the letter:
"June--1914--El Miradero.
"This is going to hurt you, Robert, and I am deeply, deeply
sorry--but it is inevitable. You see I am writing from the lodge in
the Cantabrians. You know it belongs to the young Marqués de Burgos,
but perhaps you don't realize that he is the Don Arturo I sometimes
spoke of in my letters. He has loved me a long time. To-night I
decided to remain with him because I came to see that if I gave him
up and went back to you I would be too unhappy to live.
"Please don't think me deceitful! Please believe that when you left
me in Paris I did not dream that I'd ever come to such a decision! I
meant after a visit here to go on to New York as we arranged, never
see Arturo again, never hear from him. I meant to set myself to
forget him. This is the truth.
"I couldn't keep to it. When I found myself alone with him, up in
these mountains, separated from the whole world, the world and its
laws lost their strength. I got to know myself. I could not keep
faith with you.
"There's no use trying to explain--I feel something for Arturo unlike
anything I ever felt before, a happiness almost too great to believe.
"He has very little money. We'll have to wander about Europe in the
simplest way. I gladly give up home, friends, the good opinion of
the world for him. I would endure any hardships for his sake. I am
in love--madly in love!
"You see I am hiding nothing. I do this deliberately so that you
will realize how clearly I understand what to-night I have chosen,
and that the truth written here will be enough to gain you a divorce.
Free yourself from me at once, and I pray--from my heart--that later
you will love a woman who will make up to you for the pain I am
causing you now.
"I'm not writing to my mother. Please see her and show her this
letter? She was afraid that I'd take this step. She'll say that I'm
a fool--that I'll pay for it in bitter disappointment. Perhaps I
will--but I have made my choice.
"Good-by, Robert. You have loved me, I know. I am so sorry to
grieve and disappoint you. In all likelihood we'll not meet again,
and I hope we don't. I care for you too much in a kind way to wish
ever to see you after you read this. Good-by again.
"ELSIE."
As she dressed she could hear the lingering sounds of the storm.
Though the rain seemed to have ceased, the wind still shook the house.
She put on the white Rue de la Paix gown. It was of a shimmering
tissue; her shoulders and arms rose out of it as from a tulip made of
crystallized vapor; it clung suavely about her to below the knees;
from there broke into a froth about her pointed, flashing slippers.
Two spots of dark red, like burns, showed high up on her blanched
cheeks. From her day-long anxiety and the clash of emotions there
was luster in her restless gaze, not unlike the bright look of
wasting that one has who is spent from illness. And it was so--thin,
misty, hushed and starry-eyed--that Arturo saw her come down the
stairs and make her tremulous advance to him where he stood before
the fire.
She had passed Serafin in the hall above. He had been opening one of
the shutters and had not even glanced at her. Still, while going by
him she had been aware of a covert simper that had seemed to exude
from the pulled-up corner of his eye and his twisted mouth. She had
felt it like a smearing gibe that lingered upon her as his hand had
done once upon hers; and she felt a disgust for him now as she had
then. Her first words to Arturo, as he drew her to him with a quiet
sort of rapture, expressed this, though guardedly:
"I wish Serafin weren't here, Arturo. I would rather he didn't
know--"
Arturo held her away gaily, his eyes droll and astonished. "_Santo
Dios_--but he is a servant!" He broke into some musical, exclamatory
Spanish and added with a wondering shrug of his supple shoulders: "He
does not exist!"
"I don't like him. Something about him--"
"Well, don't think of him. As it happens, I have already arranged
everything as you would like it. He is going."
"But you have not told him--?"
"As far as he knows, you are merely remaining until I can get you
comfortably away by motor. He leaves here by the early coach, brings
back the car, then goes on to see my mother for me and to attend to
some business in Burgos. He will know nothing about us until later,
probably when we've gone from here and at a time when we shall hide
nothing from the world. Does that content you, Elsie?"
"Yes, I'm glad. You were thoughtful, Arturo."
"I love you," he said in a soft, even, lingering tone that somehow
was the most final declaration.
He had spoken this mangled half-truth with every accent of sincerity
because he was without consciousness of duplicity. Some men
everywhere, and most Latins, are graceful liars to women. Lies can
even have beauty when they are salve upon the needless angers, fears
and doubts of those unreasonable beings who always expect too much of
human nature, who yet are delicious, and without whom life is both
inconceivable and impossible.
"Have you written your foolish letter?"
She drew it from her girdle, a gray-blue square. "You think it so
foolish? Why?"
"I suppose because I have an inborn dislike to setting down the
irremediable in black and white, to seeing any step taken impulsively
that afterthought cannot affect." With a dubious smile he spread out
his hands helplessly.
"This feeling comes, no doubt, from the eternal 'to-morrow I will do
it--' the _mañaña_ that is the curse of Spain."
"And with me," she said, fingering the letter delicately, "this
represents conscience. Don't you see?--it is as a bit of my
conscience, Arturo, that I send it. Here--I left it open for you to
read." She pressed it into his hands and sat down, looking up at
him, while her pulses kept knocking at her ears through her white
stillness.
As Arturo balanced the letter his face quivered slightly with a look
of ironic distaste. "I would not care to read it, Elsie. Tell me
simply what it expresses. You have said clearly that you are here
with me and mean to remain with me?"
"Yes."
"You have assumed, too, that he will get a divorce?"
"I have told him to."
"Then you have said everything. I'll seal it for you with this
ring," and he held up his hand on which there was the dull gold crest
of his family, long familiar to her.
With poised breath she watched him go to the desk. As she heard him
strike the match to melt the wax a feeling of sudden, disorganizing
sympathy for Robert made her weak. She bent her face, and a wave of
miserable prayer for him--and for herself--swept up from her heart.
"Here it is." Arturo was standing before her with the letter sealed
and stamped. "And I hear Serafin coming for it." At this she stood
up and waited for him to utter the serious message that hung in his
long gaze: "Now, Elsie, my darling--_think_--are you sure you wish to
send it? Wouldn't later do?"
Serafin was a shadow in the doorway behind her as she answered. Her
voice reached him with the ringing clearness of a child's, it was so
desperate and sure: "It must go! Let me be honest with him from the
beginning!"
"Eduardo is waiting, _Señor Marqués_," Serafin said, and approached
to take the letter Arturo held out.
His voice startled Elsie. She had not known he was so close. He
must have heard what she said. As he spoke she turned fully upon him
and at once was struck by an alertness never seen in him before,
while his face seemed locked in a look of greediness so pushing he
forgot to hide it. Clearly, she felt, he was burning to send the
letter on its way.
She would have been lacking in the acute precognition of women if
during those few seconds this discovery had not tried to wing its
warning to her. If her enemy were so eager to have the letter go,
how could it be other than injurious to herself to satisfy him?
A frayed breath broke from her and with a touch of wildness she half
turned Arturo aside, her hand closing on his above the gray-blue
square. "Wait--wait! Oh, maybe I ought to say something more in
it," she said very low, hoping that Serafin would not hear, "--say
more than I did, Arturo, about all--oh, all his goodness to me!--be a
little more kind. Send word for Eduardo to wait a few moments,
Arturo--please. I could say--"
"No." Arturo whispered this to her, the decision in his face like
the blue light from steel. "If you are sincere, want to be forgotten
quickly and quickly given your freedom--don't be too kind! You have
written the plain truth. Then send it--or destroy it. Shall I fling
it in the fire?"
For a few seconds her eyes wavered in doubt while no hint of the
detonating consequences that hung upon her answer stole to her.
"No." She gave this with firmness as she made a gesture of
acceptance toward Serafin and moved to a chair, steadying her hands
upon its back.
Her deep gaze followed the man as he hurried from the room with the
letter. Arturo came to her side, and they both stood listening. A
moment later Serafin's voice and another's reached them from without;
then a hoarse 'Buenas noches' and frantic, coercive chirrups followed
by the diminishing clatter of hoofs on the flagged road beside the
garden.
When there was silence again except for the wind that was now like
the woods' high singing, Arturo drew Elsie to the couch before the
fire.
"That is done--and now it is to be forgotten. Let us not speak of
that letter again," he implored.
"Only this once. You're very sorry that I sent it. Isn't that so?"
"At first I was--yes. Not now. For I see quite well that you would
not have been happy otherwise. Ah, my Elsie--if women had been even
half as true with me as you have been with Robert Maury!"
CHAPTER XII
Dinner was served immediately, and from the beginning Arturo made it
a joyous thing. Even his pretense of a slight formality with Elsie
in Serafin's presence was saturated with the hidden gladness of their
mutual understanding. And when Serafin was absent, their hasty
caresses had the sweetness of the stolen thing. For all Arturo's
poverty, he had some bottles of vintage champagne at El Miradero and
one was brought out, the cobwebs dusted from it, and drunk with
toasts that, while not more in speech than the usual "_A toi!_" or
"_Salud!_" were messages of love in warm glances.
In the shaded light Elsie was magically lovely,--in every detail the
sort of blond witch that at sight disturbs the pulses of men of the
dark, southern races. She in radiant white, the candles under white
lace, no color on the table but a big dish of apricots and carnations
of the same hue in small vases, made a picture of great beauty.
When only the fruit and wine were left, and Serafin, with a
low-voiced "_Buenas noches, Señor Marqués_" and a bow that included
Elsie, had departed for the night, Arturo moved close to her at once,
his black eyes restless with love.
"You make me think of snow and stars in Russia," he said, his arm
about her. "Did you go to Russia, _chiquita_, when _la petite_ Nina
went?"
"No, my mother never took me on European journeys--just American
cities, now and then. I told you how I lived in New York with my
father's older sister when I was little. But after I was married I
lived only in mining places for years. When I came to Paris, that
was the first time I crossed the ocean."
"Mining towns?--_Huy!_" he said with distaste, "Ah, no wonder after
such crudity Paris went to your little head, Elsie. I remember that
it was your hungry, joyous air--a _gamine's_--as you ran about
everywhere, afraid of missing a single, exciting thing, that first
caught my heart."
Elsie's eyes took on a serious, self-studying look, a smile tinged
with bitterness. "Paris did go to my head--ah, yes, just as you say.
There was a mental fever at first and, after I met you, moral coma
must have set in gradually--for you see, Arturo?--to-night is the
sequel!"
Arturo ignored this. "Yes," he murmured, "you look like one winter
night in St. Petersburg that I especially remember; it stands out
like a diamond. The Nevsky, pure white, packed with snow that
creaked under the feet like powdered glass and sent up sparks--the
big horses in the sledges seeming coated with sugar--and the
moonlight so queer and greenish against such whiteness, and the ice
tossing off blue lights--"
"How beautiful, Arturo! But as you detested the Paris winter, I
can't imagine your loving that icy sort of splendor."
"I did not say I loved it--I remember it for its beauty. You have
looked like it, to-night, you slim, white wonder, as you have smiled
across the table at me. Only the outside! Deeper," he said, with a
long sigh, "there is a red, red rose for a heart. Do I not know?" he
whispered, and let his lips brush her shoulder in the softest way.
"Shall we go to Russia, Arturo?" she asked, her head bent to his.
"Anywhere--everywhere! Let us be two Spanish gypsies, who care not
whether they are liked or hated by others, or what land it is, as
long as they can keep together. But the place I think of for us now
is--Taormina." He drew back, his face inspired. "Ah, how you will
love that spot, Elsie! No infidel," he said with the spiritual
earnestness that lingered in him under his aimlessness and voluptuous
selfishness, "could stand on the hills of Taormina above the sea and
say: 'This is but the result of chance. No God made it.' For it
is--God!"
A soul-moving comfort, as from the Infinity he pictured, touched
Elsie. It was the first time he had spoken of faith in a life to
come, and she felt a rill of gratitude break deeply in her heart that
he should have said these words to her on this night of nights. He
was not to be bound by promises, yet she felt suddenly a sure belief
that the eternal was in his love, since he could speak of God to
her,--to her, a rebel against law; alone with him there; every tie
with her past security deliberately cut; at his mercy for happiness
or wretchedness in the years to come.
As he saw the seriousness flow into her gaze he scowled lovingly. "I
have made you think of solemn things. That must not be. We can take
the heaven of the Church on trust--for I feel that God will not be
too hard upon us--and wander now in our own paradise here." His arm
tightened about her in hushed, strong yearning. "When we Spaniards
have great joy, Elsie, we say: '_Tomar el cielo con las
manos!_"--that is: 'We will seize heaven with our hands!' And that
is where I am taking you--ah, Elsie!--to that heaven with me."
The wind seemed to cap these fervid words with an orchestral
epilogue; it trilled and sighed through one of the now opened
windows, then rose in warm, high strains that yet were soft, as if a
multitude hummed through closed lips.
"It must be lovely out on the galleries after the storm," Arturo
said, springing up. "The moon is in its last nights and rises late.
I want you to see it--but you can't go as you are--you'd be a
drenched butterfly."
There was a gay ten minutes during which he insisted on fetching
black slippers from her room, kneeling before her to put them on,
laughing while he kissed each silk-clad foot before he did so.
"Ah, _que noche!_"--he said with the voice of one drowsy from too
much delight. "But this is a sweet thing to do--to wait upon you,
dress you, help you so! And now your gown?--what can we put about
you that won't spoil it? It would tear like a cobweb--"
"It's stronger than it looks," Elsie said, nodding wisely. "It will
have to stand long wear and a good many dry cleanings before I can
throw it away--"
"Ah, _si? Pobre chiquita!_" A cloud went over him. "You are poor
now, pretty thing. I am so sorry."
"But I am so happy!" she retorted, and then: "Shall I get my cloak?"
"No!" He was alight again, his finger held up. "There is something
that I just remember. I have packed here some ancient _mantillas_ of
my family, that my mother let me have for decoration." As he went to
a scarlet, enamelled chest in a corner, he was radiant. When from a
flat package he drew out half a dozen gloriously embroidered shawls
with the cry: "Look! And this--and this, too!" she saw their
likeness to two happy children, playing a game.
With the opening of the paper a cascade of colors had fairly spilled
into the room--streams of crimson and gold, amethyst and apricot; of
sky-blue, opaline, apple-green, flame--a rainbow flood. He chose one
with the Spanish colors to shroud in the native way, that was almost
Eastern, about her head and shoulders. At the gold and scarlet
framing her so vividly, hushed exclamations of almost religious
ecstasy broke in Spanish from him, and Elsie felt the flavor of fear
at the taste of too much happiness. It faded for a moment at some
words that drifted from him thoughtlessly:
"I used these at a _mantilla_ party that I had here last year--ah,
very gay we were!--but not one looked as you do, my darling."
She drew back a little. "Some woman wore this, then?"
As he gave a shrug of regret for having spoken, he said with light
defiance: "Well, yes. Not a man, surely!--But, don't mind!" His arm
enfolding her impetuously, he drew her across the room and paused at
the entrance to the balcony. "All that sort of thing is done with
forever, Elsie--a mixed-up splash in my mind, from which no face--not
one--looks out!" As a conclusion to the words he pulled open the
door.
And a wonder was before them. The high peaks were silver, the lowest
valleys gaping mouths of shadow; a dying moon traveled the sky that
was streaked with the fanged trails of swollen wind clouds; just
below them lay the garden, its flowers drained of color, its earthy
walks seeming padded with snow, while across it the pattern of the
house was flung as if stencilled in charcoal. The whole world was
black and white.
With this there was the music of moving water left by the flood of
rain. A complaining gurgle ran along the gutters of the roof above
them, and over its projecting, pointed corners a lilting note from
the fall of thin streams; somewhere, farther on, the rush of a
disgorging spout was heard, that ended, more faintly, as a big splash
into some chasm. On the intense stillness there was no other sound.
They stood in silence. Uncertainty and the faintest quiver of regret
departed from Elsie as she dreamed there, her head against Arturo's
arm. What she looked upon was so unlike any encompassment that had
ever been hers, she felt a yielding to its force as one might accept
the bewildering conditions after death and think of earth no more.
Her very loneliness with this man, the wild, sweet flavor of whose
love had captured her, and her now stark need of him, filled her
curiously with a fatalistic contentment, a rich drowsiness. The
years ahead of them! ... Ah, the long years--if Fate were kind--of
which to-night was the prologue! ...
And with this surrender, the intense passion in her nature found
expression in little ways of response,--the ways born with some
women, never even dimly seen by others, and beyond the acquiring of
those who, seeing, try to capture them for success in the land of
love. It is age-old, this magic, and goes only where it will, like
royal favor. Elsie had it. Benumbed in the taciturn days with
Robert, a frightening force and fought down with suffering,
heretofore, in her resistance to Arturo's fiery pursuit, she let it
sweep over her now; a sensuous melting.
Her head sank far back, her eyes looked up fully into his, her hand
shot up to his face. And there it spoke to him as no words could.
That small hand, soft as flowers yet with a savage call in it,
stroked his cheek with gossamer lightness; stole to his hair, the
fingers creeping through it; and came back to flutter with the brush
of a butterfly's wings over the lovely line of his brows. "Oh, but I
do love you," she said, a hard sound of pain in the words, and with
sudden violence drew down his head to the tempest of her breath and
lips.
This avowal of herself, unsought, flooded Arturo with a new joy too
wonderful for belief, and left him hushed, trembling.
"Elsie!" broke from him when he could speak, "Ah, you are too
sweet--too precious! Never shall we part--never, never!"
"And I'll never think again with hard judgment for what I have
chosen," she murmured. "I am happy, Arturo."
"Say 'Arturito'--that is my little name. In Spain we always add on
letters like that to a name, where we love."
"Arturito," Elsie repeated.
"How shall I make your name into a little one, that way, that will be
for me and no other? It is so English, I cannot. Never mind. I'll
think of a Spanish one for you.--Come to the other side. I want to
show you the precipice in this light."
They had almost turned from the rail when he felt Elsie's fingers
grow hard on his shoulder. "What is that, down there?" she said with
a driven breath, looking back toward the side that they were leaving.
"Where?"
"You see that shadow on the path--there--the one that does not fit
into the shape of the house like the rest? It is not from the house,
Arturo. It--moved. I saw it."
"It does not move now," he said. "Yet you are right--"
"It is a cloak--like a shoulder, too--and a hat. Don't you see?"
As they spoke and he was bending over the balcony to call out, the
shadow vanished.
"Serafin," he said to her in explanation. "Yes, it was Serafin
wandering about on the road. He does that often. Come--" and as
they turned the corner, he added with a laughing murmur not without
its tinge of cruelty since it found pleasure in another's pain, "I
know very well how he hates having to leave here. He has an
adoration for El Miradero. You see, he is of the mountains. Yes, he
hates to go away by the coach--and it's only a few hours off now, for
it is growing late."
The abyss that met them on the other stretch of balcony was a thing
to hit upon the heart and keep it suspended,--beautiful, appalling.
Elsie felt as if she were clinging to Arturo in a nest built, in a
spirit of mad folly, over death. She turned from the frowning depths
and hid her face against him.
"I didn't know we--hung--like this," she murmured, and gave a shiver.
"_Chiquita_--frightened?"
"Isn't it foolish to have the house built so?"
"It is said to be safer, as it makes it a part of the strong
mountain."
"I can't look down there. Let us go back."
"Come, then." He led her to the other side and through the door that
he had left open.
After the awful majesty without, the room had the spell of home.
Elsie hurried to the fire and, flinging off the gay shawl, sat on a
stool. She bent over the heap of red-hot embers, from which rich
forest scents rose, and that turned the silvered whiteness clothing
her into a crust of dancing sparks.
"You are not as cold as that," Arturo mocked lovingly, coming to her.
"Yes, I am. That moon made me see--horrors."
"Ah, Elsie, you have a fearfully vivid mind. Your imagination is the
thing that makes you afraid. You see all around an idea.--You were
very much afraid of me at first. You remember?"
"Yes," she nodded musingly.
"But now you are not?"
"No," she said clearly, with a look of dreaming love.
"Not at all?" he asked, frowning as if disappointed, and knelt beside
her.
"Not a bit," she smiled. "It is your turn now. You must be afraid
of me--afraid of losing me. If I run away from you, you'll never
find me in these mountains!"
He answered with a laugh that, while soft, was of the richest
triumph. "You will never run away from me," and by his look she knew
how truly she was the woman adored, and with madness desired. "I
have made you love me. And you are going to love me more and more,
every day!--Darling, you hear?--it is striking twelve. Shall we go
up-stairs?"
"Not yet," Elsie murmured. "A little longer by the fire."
"Then I'll give it a last flare."
He said this with sultry calmness, turned to the desk and came back
with rustling papers in his hands. To her look of inquiry he gave a
smiling sneer, a twitch of the brows.
"You would never imagine what these are: old love letters, to me! I
spread them out and read them in a fit of melancholy the other day,
when I thought you were not coming."
While kneeling to push the papers under the embers he saw that at the
words her face had darkened, and with the new, high flame upon him,
he swung back to her to lay his head with ecstasy on her breast:
"Ah, don't you see how I dreamed over these husks from a few who had
loved me, when I thought you did not and had gone from me forever?
And don't you see how they make a fitting blaze to light a last log
for us to-night?"
After throwing on some wood, he settled himself at her feet, facing
her, his arms on her knees, his back to the room, and drew from his
finger the ring with which he had sealed her letter. In a serious
and tender way he lifted her left hand.
"This is tight on my little finger, so it may fit your biggest one.
There!--It is loose upon it, but it will do. Now, listen to me,
Elsie," and he held her gaze with one of deepest love, "I give this
ring to you. _There is no other like it in the world_. I give it to
you--forever. It binds us--forever. White dove--very dearest--if I
could give you more! ..."
As he crouched lower, his head almost on her knees, Elsie, her face
illumined, bent silently over the ring. He watched her with
luxurious content and saw her, still without speaking, lift her hand
high to let the firelight play upon it. Then he saw the raised arm
stiffen convulsively--saw it sink as if it were stone--while her face
became that of a statue, its rigid gaze fastened in terror beyond him.
A frog-like coldness was roughening him as, still looking at her, he
started inquiringly to his knees: "Elsie--?"
"A man--!" Her stare unchanged, this broke from her, a hushed
stammer that acted on Arturo like the pull of a rope.
He sprang to his feet, swung about.
CHAPTER XIII
And there was a man. He was between the portières that shut off the
hall to the servants' quarters; they were of some pale heavy stuff
and he made a somber splash against them. For his clothes were of
raven blackness,--the accentuated mourning of Spain; that they were
also the ample Spanish cloak whose folds upon one shoulder were
packed to his ear, and the broad-brimmed hat which cast its wide
shade, added notes so _outré_ to foreign eyes, they called for drama
as a background. Out of this sable oblong his middle-aged peasant
face gleamed, chalk-white; his shadowed eyes were oblique like
Serafin's, and deep-set, Asiatic, they burned a call to accounting
across the big room.
The shadow that had moved upon the garden! Memory of it came at
Elsie like the worrying of amazed hands. Here it was materialized.
It had entered the house. Steadfast, it faced them, stormy with some
meaning.
She had risen and stood away from the fire, a little behind Arturo.
The situation had evolved so rapidly, its reality eluded her and she
could only take it in as a picture. The man's look held riveted
grief, enveloping contempt; it was hard and cold as iron, yet with
flame in it. Peasant though he was, as shown by the broad face,
thick, short body, the coarse hand that clutched his cloak, his
cumbersome clay-covered boots, the subtlety and reserve hung about
him that she had come to recognize as the proud heritage of the
Basque.
She could not see Arturo's face, only knew that at the first sight of
the man he had stood frozen and still in some terrible way.
After this moment of silence, neither moving, the stranger poured out
a flood of rapid Spanish. It was like the bursting of waters long
imprisoned, that swept out of him as if without any will of his.
Unintelligible to her in the words, their meaning--an accusation of
bitter hate--was as clear as sunlight. Arturo was cold, only a curt,
annoyed phrase breaking from him now and then in denial.
"I see you have not forgotten me," had been the peasant's greeting.
"I have come, as I wrote you I would. I heard you were here, and I
waited my chance. For days I have been in this neighborhood,
watching, while I hid like a thief. And to-night--you left your door
open! I walked in. Yes, through your open door I came, for God had
willed it so. From the day I knew she had gone with you--a year ago,
now--I knew that sometime we would stand just as we are!--My daughter
has been in her grave a month now, with her child, both in one
coffin--_in ground unsanctified_.... I came on here--and you left
your door open, so that without difficulty I could enter." He gave a
chilling murmur as a laugh. "You see, _Señor Marqués_, how God has
ordered it all--made the path easy for me? Why, look!--my daughter
in her unsanctified grave--and your door wide open to me!"
The strife grew tense. An implacable fierceness had come to the
visitor's whole manner, though he had not stirred a step, the
vehemence entirely in the gestures of hand and fingers, while the
rushing Spanish phrases, absolutely unaccented and evenly rhythmed as
the rat-a-tat of wheelwork, left Elsie dazed. While aware that her
heart was beating very fast, she was not terribly alarmed, not even
when, during the running clatter of words, the man had pointed at her
with a look of overwhelming insult, for she had come to know that
among the Spanish even a slight difference of opinion could cause a
cascade of excited language. Arturo's sharp "_Pero no!_" and the
countryman's sweeping, fierce, "_Pero si, Señor Marqués_!" might mean
no more than that he was a discharged servant or a tradesman to whom
money was owing.
Her first fear came with a shaping misgiving after this thought: Why,
in such case, did not Arturo ring for his servants? Why did he stand
in one spot as if stricken of the power to move, or as if the
slightest move might be dangerous, perhaps the thing to project
disaster of some sort? Why, instead of disdaining to listen to the
man, did he remain stock-still, listening with strained attention?
Why did his replies, crisp and contemptuous though they were, come on
a hurried breath as if he were fagged from running?
In a moment she knew why. He edged slowly toward her in a guarded
way, while keeping a semi-gaze on his opponent. And fright was
written upon Arturo. It was controlled fright, that longed to send
out a call for help and did not dare. Lips and eyes seemed those of
a mask, they were so stiff, while in piteous unlikeness to them a
line of small drops, that could have come only from the viscera of
feeling, sparkled upon the livid forehead; the nostrils were pinched,
a greenish tinge spreading from them. Yet, most appalling to Elsie
was his attempt to convey an air of confidence matching a tone that
he tried to keep suave, merely that of a courteous host, while his
words made his stark peril plain to her:
"Go quietly, Elsie, as if you were bidding me good night. He does
not understand what I am saying, but I dare not mention a name. Send
my valet to me at once. The room is on the right side of the hall
past where this fellow is standing. Don't knock or call. Go in,
send him to me without his waiting to dress. But don't seem to
hurry. Quietly, for God's sake. Don't let him suspect." He managed
a smile that had the twitch of a grimace and the hand that he waved
slightly, as if in genial farewell, trembled in spite of his rigorous
effort to keep it steady.
She tried to obey him, tried to copy his attempt at composure, and
began her walk to the curtains beside which the shadow still stood.
To her weighted feet they seemed a mile away.
The man had continued talking. As she slowly neared him, his voice
took on a conclusive fall. "We were a happy family. My daughter was
good. You have tried to say differently in your excuse. _A lie_.
Ascuncion was good. We had reared her carefully. When you first
came her way, I knew the sort you were, and I drove you off with
threats. Then she disappeared--went to you. Ah," he said with
terrible bitterness, "it was not many months before she was
back--different then! You had left her with money and directions to
go home, and had gone your way. And that ended the matter for you,
señor. But, ah, no!-- You took her, finished with her, threw her
away, and she is in unsanctified ground to-night. So now we will
have the end--the one that satisfies _me_."
The curtains were reached. Elsie had put her hand upon them when a
few words that she could understand rang out behind her, such hate in
them they seemed to fall upon her own sensitive body like
stones--"_perfidio!--ladron!_"
On the last raging syllable there was a shot.
The crash sent her unsteadily and face downward against the curtain
that she held to while a gasping call for Serafin left her. When she
tried to swing about, a hand fastened brutally on her bare shoulder
and pressed her head forward so that she could not turn an inch.
There was not a sound in the room behind her. No cry, no step, and
yet she knew that the stillness was more to be feared than anger or
prayers, that something dreadful was there which she could not see.
Another shot made clamor. Though this came as the end of all things
to Elsie's frayed sense, she heard a stumble after it, a sound as of
a falling chair, and Arturo's voice saying "Serafin" in a bubbling,
feeble way. The big hand that bruised her relaxed, gave her a
flouting thrust, and she managed to turn. She was like something
that had no feet to keep her upon substance, something that seemed
made of water--and she saw Arturo...
He was sprawled across an overturned chair, his head back. She could
see his open mouth, blood stealing from it. And he was still, oh,
informingly still in that contorted pose, so different from his
grace, so different from--himself. The white square of his shirt was
changing to a scarlet square and the hand that was hanging was also
red.
"_Señor_--!" This, a call, hoarse and trembling, shattered the hush,
and close to the spot where Elsie stood on those shadowy feet that
had threatened to throw her, Serafin appeared.
The curtains leaped out with the force of his fling as he ran to
Arturo. His entrance was like the rush of a storm. He was in a
dressing gown that hung open, showing his night clothes, his hair
tossed. He bent down--briefly--rose stiffly, and fixed his eyes upon
the man.
"_Muerto!_" As he said this, his hand rose, shaking, and he crossed
himself.
Elsie had not realized his love for Arturo. The engulfing anguish in
that one word that, though never heard before, she understood, made
her know it now.
The stranger had gone slowly to the balcony door. He pulled it open.
Ghastly, of a deadly composure, he stood straight and began to speak
to Serafin in quiet tones, each sentence with a clipped finish:
"No one has seen me come, and none shall see me go. I am leaving for
America. You can keep silent, if you will. But accuse me, have me
caught, and I will make his name--a dog's--through Spain." He looked
earnestly at the crumpled body growing rigid in the supreme
stillness. "Her soul will rest now, perhaps," he said with deep
sadness, and went out with an unhurried, almost a reverent step,
closing the door after him.
Serafin knelt beside Arturo. He made the sign of the cross above the
stark face. Utter hopelessness hung upon him as he gazed and gazed,
touching the forehead and cheek--an awed caress. As Elsie saw him
nerve himself to make his fingers close the eyes and press on the
lids, as she saw his dark, thin hands force the mouth shut, a
strength came out of the fog of horror and sent her to him,
stumbling, voiceless, all the sense of which she was capable focussed
in a stupid, asking gaze.
He looked up, saw her, and rose. As he faced her, implacable hatred
flashed through his haggardness and flickered around his drawn eyes.
"Dead?" Elsie asked, the word thick in some horrible way and crowding
her bitter-tasting mouth.
"Yes."
"Oh, no," came on a thin, imploring wail. "Oh, no," she said again,
looking down at the body that seemed broken there before them,
stained red and sprawling ignobly,--so lacking now in any trace of
pride.
Serafin sullenly glowered upon her, a look to kill. When she had
half knelt, he caught her up under the arms and flung her back with a
force that sent her against the table.
"This is your fault," she heard him say as if through a haze. "It
was because of you that he came here so early. Even when he believed
you had gone to America, he quit Paris because he could not bear it
with you not there. Never before did he come here until late in
July. If he had waited until then, things might have been arranged.
He knew of his danger--I warned him. But he paid no heed--because of
you, because he had lost his senses about you. And that is why he is
there--_dead_. Because of you!"
"Oh, no," was all Elsie could say, a prayer, a dazed whimper.
"Yes, yes!" This rang from him with increased venom. "And no doubt
you are sorry now, madame, that you did not take his advice and
destroy the letter that Eduardo took away. You sent it, because you
were so sure--in your conceit. I hope you are sorry. I hope you
would give your right hand to recall it!"
Her sick, turgid look, struggling to grasp memory, might have touched
a stone. Her hand went up to her wet face. Oh, yes--the letter--the
letter to Robert that cut her off from him, from her old life, that
left her a stranger to everything familiar. Oh, yes, the letter! ...
One moment she saw it, a gray-blue atom, making its way steadily
westward like a slow-flying bird. The next, and its meaning slipped
from her into a swallowing space. She felt only the nearer tragedy,
saw only the dead man who had loved her.
CHAPTER XIV
The harshly painted wall of cornflower blue and beside it the bed
draped with the velvet cope of crimson and gold. Elsie, in the room
that was to have been hers, sat staring at these with unmoving eyes.
She did not see them for what they were; they seemed only the bright
background against which the scenes in her thoughts raced past.
Her lips were slackly apart as if she had the wish to cry out at what
she watched, but not the power. She still wore her mistlike gown; it
was stained, crushed, one of its frail lengths torn. This, and the
loosened hair that sagged downward in a half coil were notes in the
picture of disaster that she made. She sat as if she had not moved
for years, as if she would never move again.
Over and over the happenings of the past two hours took on for her a
shadowy sort of life: There was Serafin ordering her away to her room
and calling in the horrified servants to the work of readjustment.
There she was, trying to obey him, yet loitering piteously, too
nerve-strapped for the relief of tears. She saw him come to her and
try to sweep her from the room with his arm that had the authority of
a conqueror's; at last half-carry her up the stairs.
In the bedroom, he had put her into a chair and stood over her. She
had been conscious of looking up at him, a longing for comfort of
some sort struggling through a dumbness whose rivets were horror.
And she had been conscious, too, that his face was as livid as
Arturo's, while the eyes whose brightness made an uncanny contrast
were cautious and businesslike as were all his movements and tones.
He was passionately capable.
Most of his words stuck to her memory in patches: "Get your wits
about you ... you look stupid enough to spoil everything ... Listen
to me, madame ... work to be done here ... you must realize where we
all stand, and help.... How much of the quarrel did you understand?"
He shook her as he spoke, and she had made a hideous effort to drag
response from her mazed brain; it was like groping into the mess of a
wreck where the dead lay to fish out some ghastly detail. What had
she understood? Little, she told him; almost nothing. Only at the
last, when the murderer had spoken slowly, two words had made sense
to her--_perfidio_ and _ladron_.
"Perfidious thief?" Serafin suggested, and she had nodded.
"Exactly," he went on. "The quarrel was about some money that the
_Señor Marqués_ had owed the countryman for a long time. You see?
But that is not to be made public. No one is to know there was a
quarrel at all. You understand me? It is to be supposed that the
_Señor Marqués_ surprised a thief breaking into his house--there are
plenty of them in these mountains--that shots were exchanged, the
thief's killing him. That is to be the story. The servants know
little and will do as I instruct. And the thief will disappear, an
unknown man, who will not be traced. The family's name must be
safeguarded, kept clean of the slightest scandal. Do you fully
realize what I am saying to you?"
With her struggling gaze upon him she had said she understood.
"Very good, then. When, a little later, you hear two shots, do not
be alarmed. You will know that I am emptying two chambers from the
_Señor Marqués's_ pistol, so it will appear that he fired to defend
himself. If at any future time, by any chance, you are dragged into
this, you will know what to say?"
"Yes," she had replied obediently, following him by an effort. "I
will be careful when the people come here. I--I will say--"
"You will not be here to say anything," Serafin had broken in and
seized her by the arm. "There will be enough to explain in my
venturing to move the body--pretending I did not know that I had no
right to touch it--but I could not leave it as it was, for it may be
afternoon before the authorities arrive. So I do not want you on my
hands. Take off that dress and get ready to leave. Put on what you
came in--fortunate that your trunk has not been unpacked.--Get
ready!" and with his breathless air intensifying in capableness, he
had left, closing the door after him.
These various points had remained clear to her only for a short
while; all, but the fact that no one must know it was because of a
sordid money trouble that Arturo had been murdered, disappeared in
the eclipse that had come upon her.
She did not know how long Serafin had been gone when two shots rang
out from somewhere within the house. They brought her to her feet.
These--the same sounds that had produced the earlier
_débâcle_--struck through her torpor now and caught her up as part of
life. Like the keynote that starts a tune, they made Arturo's last
guarded appeal real to her again; that woeful simulation of a smile
out of the doom in his face came back at her; through all her serves
she heard his fall once more, then saw herself turning to see him
where he lay....
After one whirling moment she recalled Serafin's warning words about
the shots, and though this came as a relief that brought a cold
moisture upon her skin, now that she was aroused she had but one
motive--to get out of the lonely room whose specters were as
agonizing as the reality she was to seek, and over which she could
spend her heart in tears. For the tears had come. They were shaking
her as she opened the door, as she went along the gallery and down
the stairs.
The living room was empty, Serafin's voice and a servant's sounding
from somewhere outside. As Elsie made her way, both hands gripping
the balustrade, her eyes sought the spot where Arturo had fallen.
The overturned chair was exactly as it had been, and beside it an
irregular, pulpy-looking stain that seemed black except where the
candles showed it bright red on the palest patches of the rug. To
these records of the tragedy a pistol had been added and lay a few
feet from them.
At the foot of the stairs her gaze swayed beyond these things, then
beyond the lighted middle part to the corners, searching, without
finding what she sought. Instinct made her cross to the hall that
she knew led to Arturo's room on the precipice side of the house, and
in a moment it faced her with open door at the end of the passage,
dimly lighted and also empty,--a different emptiness. On its
threshold the feeling that she was alone left her; there was
something fearfully living about the great, great Hush that seemed to
guard the long ridge covered by a sheet and rising from the center of
the bed.
In swooning grief she fell to her knees beside this, laid her arm
solemnly across it. She could not look upon the face that had the
expression of sculpture under the thin linen. The iron hardness of
the body, the silence where the high-throbbing heart had been were as
much as she could bear. Under their appalling message, she seemed to
drown.
A hand joggling her shoulder, a repressed voice uttering angry words
came to Elsie as if from far away. She was lying half over the bed,
her face upturned, the lashes, on which the pouring tears had dried
stiffly, jutting from below the tensely shut eyes.
"You are--_here_!" Low-voiced fury in Spanish followed, and then:
"Get up, get up!"
She made a stumbling effort to obey and failed. The submerging,
emptying quality of grief like hers made her feel as if she too had
died. It was as the shell of a body that still had eyes that she
looked up at Serafin, tried to take in what he was saying.
"You have not done as I told you!"
"Done?" ...
"You are still like this. I told you nearly an hour ago, to dress
yourself for going away--"
"Going?--Going?" ...
"Get up!"
The venom in the thin-lipped undertone shook her more than a yell
would have done. When she tried to scramble to her feet and tripped
on the torn flounce, he jerked her up and held her so, steadying her,
his long and pitiless face close to hers.
"You will not make a scene," he said, and it was advice that
threatened. "You are going quietly. You see this is the only thing
to be done."
Without replying, she tried vainly to get free of him, and as her
look rested again on the sheeted body, the floods that she had
thought spent rushed out with new wildness. "Oh, see, oh, see!--Oh,
Arturo?" She turned toward Serafin, her face twisted. "Go away a
little while. Oh, leave me here--a little while!"
"_Señora_!" This came in a stern call as to one at a distance. He
shook her, keeping her face in the grip of his palms. "Look at me."
As her eyes opened, showing a clot of tears and dull pain, he spoke
each word in separated clearness as if teaching a child a lesson.
"Every moment is precious, and you are wasting them. You must leave
El Miradero on the coach. It is due here almost at once." As he
felt her tremble at this, then harden and draw back, he went on with
a decision that had an exultant brutality: "If you do not go up and
change your dress, if you refuse to go quietly, at once, I will make
you. Do you hear? You do not know me, _señora_. When it becomes
necessary for me to act without consideration, I can do so very
thoroughly. Don't make me force you to leave."
He had not counted on the strength that can belong to hysterical
distress. Elsie's arms swept him back. She changed to a menace.
The fury in her face rubbed out its beauty and brought the look of an
animal almost overcome that backs before its enemy watchfully, ready
to attack in some way to save its life.
And then, as through her anger the thought took her that such words
could be spoken to her beside Arturo only because he could not hear
them nor any sound of life again, the piteous impotence of the dead
pierced her with its appeal, and to struggle beside that Stillness
that could not defend her became suddenly an ugly thing. Keeping her
face to Serafin, she drew back into the hall, he following her.
"I'll speak to you here," she said.
He closed the door, his hand continuing on the knob, and looked at
her with the air of one who finds waiting hard.
"Now what do you mean?" Elsie asked, making a supreme effort to be
mistress of the moment, as was her right. She kept very straight
before him, though quivering deeply, he could see. "You tell me what
I must do? You--tell me!" came on a choking sob with wrath. "You
forget your position here, and that I am a guest." She almost broke
down, had to steady herself by seizing the casing of the door. "It's
horrible to be tortured by you this way. Let me alone, oh, let me
alone! Oh, can't you see--?"
Serafin did not permit himself to look directly at her. He allowed
her last words to die away before he spoke, and then the
implacability that had come to his level gaze was in his words. "As
I told you, madame, we are wasting very precious time. Now I ask you
politely--will you go?"
"You keep saying that," she muttered desperately. "Go? Where can I
go? I'll stay here a little while, till I can see--what to do. I've
a right here--"
"I tell you it is impossible. It would be very unwise for you to be
found here by the authorities--"
"I could explain," she broke in, her mind clearer, her urging
passionate. "I came as a guest--and I'll say what you told me--I'll
remember--I'll say I was in my room, and heard the shots, and came
down. What harm could there be, if--"
"We will leave all that then. There is another reason." The words
that followed were cold and measured, an immutable exclusion of her
under them. "When Aniceto went on his bicycle an hour ago for the
police, he went also to the _Señora Marquésa's_ house to tell her
that her son was dead. She and her daughter will soon be here."
Elsie remained silent, only leaning more heavily against the door.
"This is enough. From this you see how you cannot stay."
"Why not?" She asked this faintly, though a new sort of fear of him
began in her at the look of disrespect that brazenly widened his
eyes. "If I tell Arturo's mother how I came here--if I explain--"
"Explain?" he mocked. "You are not a fool, madame! You know the
world. You know that the _Señora Marquésa_ cannot meet the woman who
was here with her son!"
Elsie slowly grew very cold, her look floundering about him.
"The--woman?" The word sent her mouth awry as if an acid had touched
it.
"Exactly," he replied incisively. "Bad enough any time, but to see
the woman who was with him when he was killed--impossible! The
_Señora Marquésa_ never thinks of such things, and her son kept her
sacred from them. Were she to be insulted by the sight of such as
you--"
"Don't say any more," came in a thick sound.
"She would have you removed from her presence," he continued evenly;
"she would not look upon you."
A blinding rage went over Elsie and gave her strength. Through it
she remembered that Arturo had said he had protected her from his man
by making him suppose she was to leave El Miradero almost at once,
but she also remembered that Serafin had overheard what sort of
message her letter to Robert had carried. Even without this latter
certainty she must speak the truth now in defending herself. The
moment was too soul-shaking for anything less, however wise, and it
carried her on its rush, defenseless, desperate.
"I'm not what you say! You know I am not!" While this burst from
her frantically, her lips trembled in entreaty. "Don't dare to say
I'm not fit to meet this woman. Her son loved me. You know it.
Don't you?"
He gave an ironic twitch of the brows and shoulders and let its
meaning sink in. "Why, yes--sufficiently," he answered, meeting her
shocked stare calmly, and added with an inference that smirched,
"Sufficiently for him to have had you here with him--that, of
course." After this he spoke rapidly, his impatience returning till,
in effect, it was what he would have used to an exasperating beggar.
"You cannot be under the same roof with the _Señora Marquésa_--not
for a moment. It would be not less than sacrilege. It would kill
her to see you." He took her by the elbow and pushed her forward.
"There is nothing more to be said."
When she felt the touch of his hand on her flesh, felt herself moved
by him as if she were an inanimate obstacle, the sense that something
monstrous was happening to her which decency compelled her to resist
changed Elsie to a storm of energy, repulsion and dread filling her.
She managed to break from his grip and, wheeling back, seized the
knob of the door.
Before she could turn it he bent over her, his powerful, swarthy
hands closing fast on both of hers and holding them as motionless as
if clamped. Elsie set her teeth, a violence that held her brain taut
until it seemed at breaking point going into her clutch, as she tried
to keep what advantage she had gained. They bent and twisted
together like one body, yet opposing each other, her hair slipping to
full freedom and sagging against her face, his breath a burning as he
pressed down upon her.
"If you'd explained to me differently--kindly--I'd have listened.
I'd go--quietly. But you to drive me out--insult me? Oh, never--oh,
no," she kept muttering, almost voiceless. "Oh, no--oh, no--"
And yet it was futile from the first second. As she spoke the words,
she knew she would be conquered. Those dark hands, as tenacious as
an ape's, seemed to have hold not only on both of her own, that were
twined and strained around the knob, but on her very life. She was
afraid of him there, at her back, unseen, hideously close--and
then--she screamed. Her hands slackened of themselves, writhed from
beneath his, flew from the door, and she sank against the wall
shuddering, her eyes distracted.
He had kissed her on the neck.
"You--you beast--" The words were a shattered whisper, and her
fingers dragged at the spot where his lips had fastened, as if to
tear it away. "You hateful--vile--"
As she looked into the deep-set, living points of his eyes, her
shoulders drawn up in nausea, her beauty and exquisiteness gone into
disarray, she was a specter of despair.
"'Necessity knows no law.'" Serafin said this cuttingly, his breath
broken and hurried. "Are you ready to go?"
"If you don't touch me--" fell from her--a ghost's voice out of a
maze, her look a demented woman's--"if--you don't touch me again!"
Lasting furrows seemed to have come to her face as, bent forward,
jolted by crowding sobs, without tears, she went heavily before him.
CHAPTER XV
A servant, the one that Elsie had not seen before, had taken away her
luggage and she was ready to leave El Miradero. She had pulled the
collar of her cloak to its highest so that it half hid her face, her
gloved hands clutched each other, at intervals a dry spasm closed her
throat. With leaden shame upon her, she sat in her bedroom, waiting,
as Serafin had told her to do.
He had also told her to leave behind her the white gown she had worn,
having shown her that the gossamer edges, brushed by the stained rug
when at the first she had sought to kneel by Arturo's body, were
sprayed with crimson. Just as well, Serafin had said, that it was
not found in her luggage at the Customs; he would burn it.
She had obeyed the didactic tones without uttering a word; had moved
in a sort of mental dishevelment where thought of what she was to do,
once she had left the mountains, would leap up only as a lightning
question. When he brought up coffee and told her to drink it to keep
up her strength on the long ride in the chill of the early morning,
she had done so; and when he had placed a package in her bag, telling
her it held sandwiches and she was to eat them before leaving the
coach, she had listened with nervous earnestness to his words,
feeling the need of any advice that would help her, yet without once
letting her eyes rest upon his face.
"You will find the motor omnibus waiting at the foot of the mountain,
all ready to go on without permitting any delay for breakfast, since
in this fog that has come up after last night's rain the mule coach
is already late," he had said.
During these preparations he had come and gone with quick, almost
soundless steps, his easy accomplishment of every detail reaching
Elsie even through her repudiation of him. When he said, "Come,
madame," she rose without change of expression, with the automatic
obedience of a prisoner.
At the foot of the stairs one of the unconquerable moments seized
her, seemed to sear through some enamel encasing her nerves, and set
them jumping with pain. She stood still, a desperate figure, and
gazed across the big space with its reminders of tragedy to the
curtains, beyond which was Arturo's room and the bed with its
clay-cold burden. To look upon the dead face would have been pain
beyond enduring, and yet, the knowledge that, had she wished this, it
would not have been permitted her, was a slur upon her sorrow.
Good-by surged from her choked heart and flowed toward the spot on
which her bitter gaze was fixed, until, aware that Serafin had opened
the balcony door and was looking back at her with a scowl, she
steeled herself and followed him out.
It was after four o'clock. Faint daylight was harsh with the
mountain cold. In this wan hour that weakens even the strong and
happy a wilting consciousness of her depreciation in value and her
terrible loneliness went over Elsie. The fog of which Serafin had
spoken and that made a cloud bath about her added to the strangeness.
It choked the valleys; and the great peaks, with the first rays
traveling down them, came out of it like points of dark stone pushing
through cotton wool. In moving along the veiled paths she had to
follow Serafin closely.
"Fortunate, after all," she heard him say over his shoulder, "that
this fog is keeping back the mules, or you would have been too late.
Let us hurry now."
She wanted to ask why they were going so fast to the road, since the
coach was not yet there; could not; nor could she bring herself to
any sort of speech with him. His next words gave the reason:
"We are going down the mountain a half mile or so, to the first
crossroad. Your luggage is already there, and there you will get on
the coach, so it will be thought you have come up from some house on
that side. The driver will not be the one you traveled with
yesterday, and he will not associate you in any way with El Miradero.
He is generally stupid and sleepy, and if you are careful will pay no
attention to you. Try not to speak at all while in the coach, so he
will not be sure that you are a foreigner, and when other people get
in, sit quietly with your veil down. Remember all I am saying to
you, madame." he said in a sudden forceful and cold conclusion.
"Once it is known what has happened here, it will be well indeed for
you to have caused no notice and to be out of Spain. Do not--"
The words broke. Serafin came to a quivering stop. "Wait!" he said,
his head lifted, listening.
They stood in silence, the vapor a moving curtain between them, and
through it from the road where it rose beyond El Miradero, a mixed
sound gradually separated into meaning,--a nearing rumble, the ring
of horses' hoofs, a voice on a high distracted note.
"Too late!--I must go back--be on hand to receive them." He muttered
this with desperation while with unconscious force he took Elsie by
the arm and pulled her toward the garden. She had never seen him so
unstrung by feeling. Even in the first dreadful moment beside
Arturo's body he had not lost command of himself as he did now. His
mouth jerked, his hands moved wildly as he drew her to a place under
the balcony where a vine-hung partition made a shelter.
"Wait here, and keep out of sight until I return," he stammered, and
disappeared.
Elsie remained motionless. She felt sure that only the coming of the
police could have produced Serafin's look of panic. She learned
differently when out of the faintly luminous fog an old-fashioned
barouche, drawn by a pair of huge draft horses as cumbersome as
itself, was revealed; it lumbered to the door only a few yards from
her and she saw two black-robed women in it.
The mother, the sister!--for the moment forgotten by her. It was
their coming that had made a trembling servant of the steel-nerved
Serafin, representing as they did a worship as vitally a part of him
as his blood. With this thought Elsie's weight of abasement took on
a razor edge. The mother, the sister,--and she there, in hiding!
Since life with Arturo as her lover had not begun, her own knowledge
of her physical impeccancy had, in one way, annulled what had been
her intention; in one way the shots that had taken Arturo's life had
made her, to herself, scarcely different from what she had been in
Paris,--a rebel, loving secretly, whose daring had gone no farther
than her thoughts and her lover's despairing kisses. And yet in
another way, that she saw now made the scales by which she was to be
rated, she could not escape from what she had meant to do, from the
intention set forth clearly and finally in her letter, and by which
she became, in status, Arturo's mistress. Her body sickened at her
plight while this knowledge bit in, while she watched the women who
must not see her.
Both wore mourning for Arturo's father, who had died several years
before; the sister, gravely moving and nun-like; the mother with
waxen, high-nosed face, her black eyes staring from between the folds
of _crêpe_ that rose above her in a canopy. As Serafin helped them
to the steps, their bewildered questions, clinkingly distinct through
the fine still air, changed at his reply into a wail for the dead, as
all stood fixed, with lifted faces, and crossed themselves. Then
bent forward, swaying, the women who had loved Arturo entered his
home.
A moment's deep silence followed. Elsie waited, leaning heavily
against the lattice. In her fancy she saw them going past the
ghastly patch where the crimson cried out to them as a
mouth--followed them to the hall beyond--to the white bed where the
great Stillness was.
And there their anguish found voice. Through the open window that
was but a little way above her, just around the corner of the house,
the grief that she had been forced to keep dumb in herself swept down
to her in the weeping of strangers. Listening, her face gripped in
her hands, she, too, let the sobs shatter her.
"Dead!--_Ay-é! Ay-é!_--Oh, Arturo!--Oh, mother, our poor mother?--"
She heard a voice cry out in frantic unbelief.
"Arturito!" followed on the thin, shaken notes of the old. "Ah, let
me hold him!--_Dios, Dios!_--Ah, my heart, my life, thou beautiful
one, my little son--Arturito! Without thee?--_ay, de mí!_--without
thee?" ... And this question on a rising scream was like the death
agony of some jungle creature.
So, the bluest blood--the thin stream of the sacred _sangre
azul_--had no other voice for pain like this than that of the
peasants' red and plenteous stream; called vainly to heaven on the
same key. No need for Elsie to understand the words to know they
voiced the insensate loss that can turn life over as a bowl, emptied.
"Without thee?" the mother wailed. And so Elsie's heart cried,
too,--one vast, blind question. How could she bear it? How live? ...
"Come at once. Quietly!" was whispered at her side, and through her
blinding tears she saw Serafin. He was not the despot who had
controlled her before. His face was pensive; moisture had softened
his queer eyes. He went ahead swiftly, with a silent tread and
without a look at her until, after five minutes' walk down-hill, he
turned and pointed to the outlines of her trunk and valises showing
against the trees.
"This is the place. The coach can't be long now. I have told you
what to do," he said, with a touch of his former authority through
the hush that had come upon him.
With no sign of having heard him, Elsie sat down on the trunk, her
elbow sinking heavily in weakness to the bags upon it.
"If you follow carefully what I have said, you will have no trouble.
Wait here."
Without a word of farewell he gave a curt lift to his hat and left
her, lost quickly in the mist around the road's turn. As suddenly he
appeared again.
"I came back to say that I can understand how you feel you have cause
to think of me as your enemy," he said in a quick, uneven tone, as if
urged to speak by some feeling that mastered him. "And you are
right. I have been your enemy since the day in Paris when you showed
me great cruelty for my mistake. You would not see me as the _Señor
Marqués's_ foster brother and an educated man, who had for a moment
lost his head. No! Because I served one to whom I was deeply
attached--although except for his family there is no other creature
on the earth that I would serve in the same way--I was to you a
servant only. You have never looked at or spoken to me as anything
else. You therefore see now how one can be made to pay for
unkindness, for had you been a little merciful to me, I would not
have allowed you to come up to El Miradero without Mrs. Vrain. Have
I made myself quite clear?"
While he was speaking, the memory of her struggle with him outside
Arturo's door and his insult there burned fiercely again in Elsie,
and through her wretchedness she also noticed sharply that he had
ceased to use his deferential "madame." She had no wish to reply to
him. And she knew, as women do know these things, that her silence
would gall him, while the most disparaging thing she could say would
brush over him without effect. She had not been looking at him; now
she turned her shoulder fully on him and gazed ahead through the fog.
"I see," he cried out as if amused. "Not worth your attention?
Still a servant? Have it so! This would be something to offend me
more if you had any of my respect. But you have not. Nevertheless I
will make a proposition to you," he continued in an unctuously silky
way through which the intentional gibe was plain, "one that I always
meant to express after the _marqués_ had tired of you--providing, of
course, you retained your beauty, which happens to be of a sort to
appeal powerfully to me--that I would be willing to assume his
responsibility toward you. You understand?"
She gave no sign.
"In accepting, you would have to live very humbly and in my class.
But as by your own written confession you are exposed to your husband
for what you are--a stupidly quixotic thing to have done, by the way,
although quite American--and as after this catastrophe you are
stranded, with nothing at all ahead of you except the precarious
career of a _cocotte_, you will be very sensible if you consider my
offer seriously. Not always is a woman of your sort given such swift
opportunity to arrange herself after the loss of her man. Often
there are long intervals between lovers, when she can come close to
absolute penury. So what do you say? If you will have me, I am
willing to take you on. And, if so, you can wait for me at some
place in France--Bordeaux would be best, as it's of good size and you
would stand less chance of being noticed. I would surely join you
within ten days."
As this last and deadly slur grew plain to Elsie, blackness spread
before her fixed eyes, while with overpowering consciousness she felt
that having heard those words, her soul was smeared and seared with
vileness forever; that inwardly she would be as changed as she would
have been outwardly, if in some disaster she had lost arms or legs.
For as long as she lived she knew she would have to fight to forget
this befouling thing.
Not by the slightest movement or half glance did she betray this,
holding with shut teeth to immobility and silence. The shudder that
she could not control--the horror that held her up, rigid, for many
seconds, and then released her so sharply that she sank still lower
over the bags--sufficiently appeased Serafin's implacable grudge.
"You refuse?" he asked, laughed, a regret that was mockery in his
rather high, clinking voice. "Ah, well, I had little hope, I must
confess. And perhaps it is all for the best, as far as I am
concerned. No doubt I'll be spared a good deal of irritation, for I
understand you so thoroughly. Women like you, living for fashion and
excitement, are useless in any good way. You have the little hearts
of cats. And what do you do with the men who love you and trust you?
You get them in your claws--you eat up their lives--you betray them.
So, when you try to insult me, I tell you you cannot, for you are
nothing--of no value in the world at all--you, with your little heart
of a cat!"
The fog had taken him again. This time he was gone and would not
return. Still he seemed there; for his dreadful words stayed. And
while Elsie resisted them, a sense of outrage choking her, the
thought that her own act had made such dishonor possible was
unbearable. For a moment her surroundings faded, and she saw herself
as the woman she had been long, long ago, it seemed now--ah, how
long!--living in a simple place of peace, her baby on her knees, its
satin fingers clutching hers in wonder, she crooning to it in a
welter of pure adoration.
When an eagle screeched above her and sped through the gloom, its
darting shadow and her own heart, knocking, seemed the only life in
the void. And when, following this, sounds came, they did not help
her, for through the muffling haze she heard only the coach driver's
cry and the clanking of the harness bells, just as she had heard them
yesterday. _Yesterday!_--when she was waited for with longing,
received with homage. Like the other memory, that, too, seemed
remote, distant a stretch of years from this forlorn departure. She
bent over slackly, as if she were old. Her face had the look of the
lost.
And this was what it meant to be a mistress! To be adored, guarded
in a man's arms, to feel that his absorbing love was all that he
wanted of life, that without you the world was empty for him,--and
then, once the breath was out of his body, to be made to taste shame
with your sorrow; to have no right to cling to the dead, no right
even to stay near, no right to tears through which at last would come
some touch of gentle healing. To become something that did not fit
in anywhere, something not wanted,--a nuisance. To be dragged away
by dark, tendony, cruel hands so that the eyes of pure women might
not see you, and to be flung out, bundled
out--anywhere--_anywhere_--only go you must!
The horrible sadness of the pariah who looks through chinks at the
life of the normal,--she knew it. One must have caste to live at
all. To be labelled _déclassée_ was to be already dead.
These were her thoughts as she tumbled into the coach, heard the man
fling in her trunks and bags with fury as if he hated them, and
resume his directing cry as he ran ahead beside the string of mules:
"_Arre! Mulo!_"
She could cover her twisting face with her hands. There was no one
to see.
CHAPTER XVI
"_Parlez doucement! La malade dort encore._"
Some one was speaking French? Elsie's eyes opened and she listened.
"_Je ne veux pas la reveiller. Revenez plus tard._"
"_Bien, ma soeur._"
Yes, they were speaking French. The voices were back of her; they
faded away, together with the sound of softly shod feet, and no one
seemed near her. She remained in an acute sort of silence, while
with the mild, slow gaze of weakness she took in details surrounding
her.
The bed on which she lay was small in what seemed, from an angle of
it that she could see beyond a screen, a very large room. There were
other beds in it, small like hers. There was a tall window with
square panes that glistened, a half curtain like a starched muslin
petticoat bulging across it. A briny smell that she could not name,
yet knew had some cleansing quality, filled the air. From without
she heard the murmurs of a town, silences between them that belong to
the day's halting start.
A shadow went like a great tongue up the plastered wall, wavered
there a moment, and a nun came around the screen. Black and white
like a charcoal outline on ivory--cool-lipped, bloodless face with
tranquil eyes; black robes; high, fluted white coif--she stood at the
foot of the bed and smiled at Elsie.
"_Bon jour, ma fille_. Having said it was better that you miss your
medicine and sleep on, you have, yourself awakened," she murmured,
and moved in a silent way that was purposeful and exquisitely
graceful to the free side of the bed where she seated herself and
laid an efficient hand, cool as snowflakes, on the patient's brow, so
thoughtful now with every honey-colored hair brushed back. "What
would you have, _ma fille_?"
"A glass of water, _ma soeur_, if you please."
After this was drained, Elsie remained on her elbow and looked with
love at this woman who on the instant had conveyed the sympathy and
helpfulness of a friend. "I am in Spain, and yet, this--French--?"
she said weakly with drawn brows.
"No. You are in France, my child."
"France?" A breath of wonder, a helpless look.
"In Bordeaux and in the _Hospice de la Bonne Mère_. Now, lean back.
Don't try to think at all, and I will clear away some of what puzzles
you. On a train belonging to a branch line that goes from here to
Blanquefort, you were taken ill. You fainted, my dear. And so, as
soon as possible, they transferred you to a train coming back to
Bordeaux, that you might be cared for here. That was three days ago,
and you have been doing well. The syncope would almost break, you
would sleep feverishly for awhile only to sink again into
unconsciousness. Last night you slept naturally, and this morning
the fever is practically gone. Now you will get well fast. All you
need is to rest, for you are very unstrung. Rest, and light food,
and soon--a week or so--you can continue to wherever you were going.
Meanwhile, you will want your family or friends to be notified, of
course."
As the nun was speaking, the truth in bits had found its way to
Elsie. Some black, some red as blood--no, red _with_ blood--they
fitted one jagged edge to another as do the portions of a dissected
map. And to this knowledge two of the phrases just heard were
joined: "Soon you can continue to wherever you were going.--You will
want your family or friends to be notified, of course." Where had
she been going? She was not sure--or where she wished to go.
Family? Friends? She could see none. She was alone.
When the nun had gone away to bring her some food, Elsie lay back
among the pillows, and while weakness seemed pulling her down through
the bed with the suction of a quicksand, she set herself to look back
and look forward, to see with some clearness what she must do.
The happenings of the night at El Miradero came down upon her: all
its mixed terror and grief; her humiliating departure from it; the
never-to-be-forgotten defilement of Serafin's last words; the ride
almost in utter solitude down that dreadful mountain through the
cloud bath, the driver guiding the wabbling mules on brinks of
torrents and across the brows of precipices with the fog sense of a
London policeman.
A misted recollection followed in which she saw herself getting on
and off trains, while a grinding ache at the lower part of her head
kept growing until it became frightening. Her last clear memory was
of a large station, no doubt Bordeaux, and where, in error because of
the now enwrapping pain, she must have changed to a local line
instead of to the one that would have carried her to Paris.
After this, her dreams in the hospital filtered back to her. They
had tortured her during the intervals of feverish sleep of which the
nun had spoken. In them she was always in a wilderness, in vast,
high solitudes. She had heard water falling, falling, winds tossing
branches; had seen shadows made by the dying moon tremble on the
great mountains. She was alone always, and always seeking some
one,--Arturo first; and he had never answered her call or shown his
face. Neither had her mother come, nor Aunt Esther, nor Paula Vrain,
nor Julie. She had never called for Robert; had always a child's
panic that, instead of the others, hearing her voice he might appear.
But he had not. No one had come. No human face had showed between
her and the leering moon that also had seemed running from her; and
no human sound had broken that stillness.
Through the rest of the day, as she submitted to the gentle care that
made her bed cool and smooth, an oasis of peace, she was content to
be silent, lying mostly with eyes shut, her fingers stirring at
times, and at times a nervous spasm contracting her spine. Her
thoughts made a teeming world. Confusing images came and went there.
In it she kept constantly seeing the irremediable past; constantly
turning from it to find she faced--nothing. Or she seemed struggling
to get through a stone wall to some future where she could save
herself. She would set her teeth desperately, focussing on this
thought. There must be some goal for her if she could find it, and
it must not be too distant, for she was weak of spirit and body.
Unconsciously she was seeking some one whom she had not hurt, and
whose devotion would always be hers without question or reproach.
Her intimates in Paris had not been friends; Paula Vrain was a sample
of them. Her mother, as practical as the multiplication table and
self-engrossed, would be her exasperated critic. Robert did not
appear even on the fleetest thought,--gone forever. And then;
through this shifting cloud of useless ghosts, she saw Julie.
Many sweet things of this woman who had served her stole to her
memory and freshened it as if flowers had just been placed beside her
bed. Her care in small illnesses during three years, her unfailing
cheerfulness, admiration, defensive loyalty. Julie, with her little,
hard, dark face and the hard, dark eyes that always grew kind when
they looked at her--ah, she would welcome her back! To Julie she
could open her heart; Julie would take her poor, slack hand, tell her
what to do; her future no longer trembled over an empty gulf nor was
she a wraith swinging on its edge. There was Julie.
As this feeling grew stronger, a rill of hope would try to rise
through her weakness only to be dammed by the opposing thought that,
plan and strive as she might for herself, Arturo was no longer among
the living--_nevermore to be seen upon this earth_. Oh,
inconceivable! Heart-stilling...! Of a sudden she would feel
herself, as before, the smallest thing in that Grasp under which the
strongest must break and run like sand. And with this, life would
spread before her again in the different, unhappy aspects that had
dogged her,--the blinding question mark, the stone wall, the empty
gulf.
Nevertheless, after these slips into unavailing grief, the thought of
Julie would return and help her. Pictures of cosy and intimate
things, the sort that have a powerful appeal for women, would come to
her in a floating, interlapping way: The hospital ward became her own
room on the Rue de Chaillot, and there was Julie, her arms full of
dewy narcissi or purple iris from the Madeleine market, pausing to
see if she still slept. Now she was stepping softly through the
shadow to open the _persiennes_ a little way to the morning sunlight
and coming back to smile at her. "Have you slept well, _chère_
madame?" she heard her say. The water was running in her bath, the
breath of _verveine_ was stealing through the half-open door, and
Julie was calling to her.--When, cool, tingling, powdered and
verbena-scented, she had crept back to the big bed, there was Julie
again, this time with a tray that held coffee and _croissants_, her
letters and _Le Matin_.
So it went, until, with Julie, a longing came to Elsie for Paris,
too. Not for the Paris she had known,--never that again, of course;
yet still for the city that she had loved and would love forever, in
some poor corner of which, beside this helper, she could hide and
think, and at last take her first steps in some new life.
Julie. Paris. She fell asleep that night holding these names to
her; tried to see only them, clear of the shifting darknesses that
sought to intrude about them as a frame.
CHAPTER XVII
It was amazing to Elsie to feel what strength had come to her after a
week in Julie's home. This was far from the modish and verdured
spaces on the right side of the Seine where she had lived. It was a
nest tucked under the notched eaves of an old house near the
Luxembourg, once a great mansion, now a beehive of poor people.
During these days she had been treated with the loving sort of
authority with which Julie would have handled her own babe in
swaddling clothes. Morning engagements for work were suspended so
that she could bathe, feed and fuss about Elsie, win her from
brooding, interest her in the little things about her,--in the
parrakeet that a sailor brother had brought from French Guiana; the
fat, drowsing cat with glowing coat that is such an important
fireside item in nearly every bourgeois home in France; the flower
pots on the balcony; the street musicians who straggled at times into
the reverberating courtyard far below.
She had heard the whole of Elsie's story the first night, had let her
relieve her heart of its weight, and then had commanded silence about
it. Not a word, not a look back! The visit to El Miradero was to be
as if it had not been until such time as its consequences could be
faced by them both and their bearing on the future lightened in some
way by the wise counsel of the very wise Julie.
Elsie had been as an obedient child and had risen every morning
revived and cool from nights of the most healing sleep. Sometimes
she seemed to herself to be a flower struggling back to freshness in
a bright vacuum, so separated was she from every impression that
heretofore had meant life for her. On the day that Julie first heard
Elsie laugh--really laugh out--at one of her drolleries, she felt as
gay as if, at last, she had drawn the winning number in the lottery.
They had been talking of Julie's husband. He had resented being
driven to take a room with a friend in order to make way for Elsie,
and had departed the first night in a towering rage, his roars of
farewell crossed by Julie's shrill anger and laughs.
"A week--and Raymond has not come to see you," Elsie had said, as
Julie brushed her hair. "I'm sorry! My coming into your home this
way--"
"_Tiens!_" Julie had broken in mockingly between her strokes on the
pale floss that hung on the air like a web, and had bent over to pat
Elsie's cheek with her forefinger. "You do not understand Raymond
and me, _ma petite_. Coming in here as you did and getting us
excited was of the greatest help to us. You see we were getting so
dull--oh, my God, so _polite_! Nothing had happened for weeks to
make the air go whirr about us at all. _Ouf_--it was terrible! It
is not healthy for married people to have all the time one big grin
on the face and be all the time amiable, madame. I began to see how
Raymond was heavy, and how his hair was left now to get long and
bushy and dusty--and when he would fall asleep over the paper and
snore, I--I--hated him! It was like that with him too. Oh, I could
tell how he was seeing that I was not so young any more! In fact we
were yawning in each other's faces--and then you came!--and Raymond
cursed that I cared for a stranger more than for him--and he cast me
off--and I told him to go and never dare to show his pig face here
again if he knew what was good for him. So now," Julie had said with
a hushed delight, "all is so well again--for, let me tell you--" and
her voice dripped with a rich content, "when I came in from the
market at his lunch hour I caught a glimpse of him down in the
courtyard, behind one of the big doors, watching for me. Well, _ma
chère_, as he peeped out at me he looked--handsome! He had his hair
cut most beautifully and a big bouquet was in his buttonhole. It was
all I could do not to drop the things and embrace him on the spot.
But, not yet," Julie had decided in the compressed tone of one who
scrutinizes a knot to unravel it. "Let him dress up a little
more--it will do him good!"
It was then that Elsie had laughed out.
And after the surprising thing happened, the smile went sharply from
her face, a dead calm came upon her that centered in a gaze on the
triangle of Paris sky beyond the slanted window in the roof. That
laugh--the amazement that she could laugh--had swept ghosts about
her. They rose up in the plain of desolation that was now her life.
Arturo was clearest: On the balcony at El Miradero he held her to
him, the black and white splendor of the mountains about them, the
light from the dying moon on his face. His veiled glance with light
through the lashes, as through the shutters of his soul, drank her
in. His kiss of desire pulled up her heart, the pain that belongs to
ecstasy in it. She heard his words: "Never shall we part--never,
never!" And, in a moment it seemed, he was dead. He was lying
twisted over the chair, the red square was spreading upon his breast,
and the light had left his eyes, all sound his lips!--That which had
meant _him_ was not there at all....
And Chance had done this. The Destiny, of which the fatalist in
Arturo had so often spoken, had swooped from space as a monstrous
hand and in an instant had swept him out of the world he loved. On
her its fall had been lighter; belittled, abject, it had permitted
her to live. Yes, the great paw that had blurred all the print on
her page of life had left her legible below it as an ironic footnote
in small type.
She stood up sharply and moved away from Julie. For some seconds she
remained like an animal stupidly dismayed.
"Ah, what has seized you?" Julie asked, and shot an arm about her.
"_Ma cherie_, do not undo all the good by thinking of things--"
"It is time!" Elsie came out of the hush. She put Julie from her
gently and took a few steps up and down. "Thoughts are coming back
very clearly. They seem stepping before me, in my path, rounding me
up with questions--and they crush me!"
"Very well. Here!--I will pin your hair--so!--and now we will sit
down by the table and go over it all."
Perhaps in no country but France could a working-woman of Julie's
type--one who was a poor speller and wrote a hand like a six-year-old
child--have been able to bring a many-sided and alert intelligence to
a situation like this as well as the imagination to feel all its
subtleties.
At the first news of Arturo's fate from Elsie she had shed a few of
her difficult tears for him. He had been winning to her by reason of
his princely beauty; she had seen him sought after in a way to have
spoiled most men and that had not spoiled him; had known how
exultantly he had loved life and women in the Paris brightness; and
his murder had been like the savage cutting down of a young tree in
fresh blossom. But he was gone; never more would he make perplexity
in her young mistress's life. And instead there was left something
of a fatal gravity that had to do with breathing flesh and blood,
with the day in and day out business of living,--the letter of
confession and farewell that Elsie had sent to her husband. Oh, the
senseless idea of honor that had prompted it! The madness of it!
That letter, and not her lover's death, Julie saw as the real
disaster to Elsie, through which she must be helped to struggle
successfully, or drift--where? During ten minutes she was a concise
questioner; and Elsie, intensely appealing with bleak, attentive
eyes, gave obedient answers.
"First," said Julie, "let me tell you that I made it my business to
go to the Credit Lyonnais and look over the papers on file that had
been published about the time you went to that hospital. You see, I
did not read any--working over here; and I wanted to know just what
had been written about the young marquis's death. Well, I found it
was all right. There was an account of how he had been shot by a
thief in his mountain place, some very nice lines of regret for him,
and some things about how great his family is. _C'est tout_.
Therefore all is well, unless the police should later find out
something. So tell me a few things, madame. Are you sure that no
one noticed your going away from that place that morning?"
"No one. The coach was empty halfway down the mountain. Then a few
old people got in who did not look at me at all."
"And--that Serafin?" said Julie, her lips pursed in malice. "Oh, I
never liked him, as you know, madame--like a long, small-eyed eel!
Well--you feel sure he will not ever speak to the police of your
having been up there during--ah, during that dreadful thing that
happened to that splendid young man, his master?"
The dark look of repugnance that always came with thought of Serafin
settled on Elsie's face. "Why should he? It was he who made up the
story of the thief to put them off the track. Oh, no. I have
finished with him forever. I have that to be thankful for, at any
rate."
"Good. So all that can be wiped out. _Swish_--it is gone!" Julie
declared. "And now you must school yourself to thinking, madame,
that _you were never in Spain at all_. Next--about your money? You
said some money had been stolen from you. To-day we will talk of it.
How much did you lose, my child?"
"I went over it yesterday, when you were out," Elsie said. "I know I
had nearly fifteen thousand francs when I went to El Miradero. When
I was getting ready to leave the hospital and took out the wallet in
my bag to get some money to pay them for their care, I found that I
had almost nothing, hardly one thousand. Think of it!--hardly two
hundred dollars out of nearly three thousand. I said nothing to
Soeur Agatha, my sweet nurse who had taken charge of all my things,
for of course I had been robbed before I reached the hospital--where,
I can't say. It might have been that the servant at El Miradero, who
took my luggage down the road that morning in the fog, stole the
money--he had plenty of time; or after I had fainted on the train,
some thief--" She gave a weary shrug. "I don't know. It is gone,
at any rate."
"It's a pity you have so little in the way of jewelry. I have been
with ladies who cleverly collected fortunes in that way, and so you
see they were never at a loss. You had only two rings as I remember,
and not very expensive ones either. Am I right?"
As Elsie listened she recalled the emerald pendant. From the moment
of her decision to remain with Arturo she had meant to send this with
a good part of his last money gift to Robert; and the same
sensitiveness had kept her from wearing the jewel at dinner at El
Miradero, lovely though it would have been against her silvery
whiteness. She felt sure that once Julie knew of it she would advise
selling it, and she was forced to see, too, that necessity made this
unpleasantly wise. It was exactly what happened when from the
compartment for jewels in the false bottom of her handbag she brought
her valuables. Julie gave a shout of joy at sight of the emerald,
and some lightning arithmetic resulted in the statement that, with a
fair market, Elsie would have for her salvation about a thousand
dollars. Besides this there were her many trunks still held in her
name at Havre, and these would be of value to some hundreds more.
"Your passage to New York," said Julie in a tone she tried to make
casual while appearing blind to the look of surprise and opposition
that dawned in Elsie's face, "will take, with other small expenses,
about fifteen hundred francs, let us say, and then--"
"I am not going to New York." Elsie looked at her with a stony and
sullen sadness.
"No?" asked Julie, and sat back in pretended confusion.
"The last place I would think of going to!"
"Where, then?" asked Julie.
"Here. I've thought a little about it--since yesterday. I'll stay
in Paris, Julie. It's big enough to hide me."
"But one must do more than hide, madame," said Julie with wise nods.
"One must eat, my child! And your little lump of money would soon
melt away."
Elsie's faintly hollowed face gave a twist of bitterness. "I mean to
work, of course. You don't seem to have thought of that."
The words brought only a fond pity to Julie's gaze. "At what? You
have a voice--that is true. But as you often said to me, it is not a
voice like your mother's. It is only a voice for pleasure, for home.
Unless--" With candid sorrow she met the eyes that were trying
wistfully to read her somber look, "--unless you would seek a place
in the cafés. Yes, your voice would get you a welcome there--and
your looks, when you have put on a little flesh--"
"Don't!" Elsie swept out of the chair. In a tornado of childish
misery she turned to the wall, put her arm up and hid her face
against it. "How could you?--Oh, how could you?--Never, never,
_never_ can I come to such a horror as that!"
"There I agree with you," Julie said briskly. "No, you must not. A
life of that sort of struggle would be as dirt upon you, kill you.
Very well. Then come back, _ma chère_, and tell me--at what would
you work?"
Elsie came slowly and stood with her hands pressed upon the top of
the low chair. There was a fierceness about her. The mere picture
of the half-naked, smirking women that, during gay excursions of
curiosity with her friends, she had seen singing in the cafés to the
shouted and often gross familiarities of the students, had seen going
among tables, drinking with the patrons, pulled at and whispered to
by them, brought a rigor of self-preservation to her. For all the
shadows left by illness and her unhappy mind, her face showed a new,
bright strength; the fine line of her brows lifted into a frown of
defiance.
"I mean to find employment somewhere in Paris that will be out of
touch with all the people I know here. They are residents, either
French or cosmopolitan--but residents. I could serve in one of the
cheap and popular little shops that are patronized almost altogether
by American tourists and where my English would be useful. I know of
one place like that where I used to buy gloves when I first came
here. You remember going there with me once--a little slit of a
shop, hardly bigger than a cupboard, almost in the shadow of the
Galeries Lafayette, kept by a young Frenchman and his wife, and where
they cut and sew the gloves right there before you? I got to know
them in a friendly way in those early days," Elsie continued
hopefully, a pink coming into her cheeks. "It's more than a year
since I've looked in upon them, but I know they will give me a chance
with them if it's at all possible. At any rate that shall be my
first attempt to find work. I hope to come back and tell you, Julie,
that I am to be an American clerk in a French shop, selling gloves to
my compatriots."
This was the moment on which Julie had counted. Now that she was
sure of Elsie's pitiable outlook for herself, it was time to speak.
"Madame!" Her voice was tender, though it had the ring of a summons,
and her mouth was set. "Forgive me if I say that you seem a little
mad to me as you stand there. Also," she went on, "like one who has
fallen overboard from a big comfortable ship to a small boat, and
who, without oars, is floating away to--ah, what? Well, I am going
to put the oars into your hands and all those things my brother the
sailor has told me of--weather glass and compass--and I'm going to
advise about what port you had better make for without a minute's
delay."
At these slow words and her stressful look, comprehension came out in
Elsie's face,--a wan light. "I know what you mean, Julie," she said
in a small voice that had a shiver in it. She held up one doubled
hand as her eyes closed. "Don't say it."
"As I am your friend, I must," Julie said and stood up. "You have
one chance and one only, madame--that is, to go back to your husband!"
"I won't talk of it." Elsie went to the window. "If you are
blind--or won't see--then go on. I shall not answer you."
"You think it is impossible because you sent that letter. But _ma
fille_, you have not thought of one thing--how do you know he might
not listen to you, if you went down on your knees and prayed to him?"
She went nearer to Elsie, whose back was to her, her chin resting on
the sill of the high, slanted window as she stared out with sick eyes.
"I saw your husband but one day, madame," Julie continued bravely,
her big firm mouth jolting with earnestness, "and I knew then that
when I had often thought him cold and unkind to you by staying so far
away from you, I was wrong. Whatever the reason, it was not that.
For I saw something in his face that I have not seen in the faces of
many men. It was in the eyes--so quiet, so steady and clear as they
looked at me--that knowledge of a strong heart came to me, and it was
a heart that loved you, madame. Oh, that man--he loved you well!"
she said and ventured to place her hard fingers on Elsie's downbent
shoulders.
"I did not speak of this at that time, madame, for I saw all ahead so
fortunate for you, as you were so soon to join your husband, and
besides those last days before you left for Spain were full of such
haste and fuss there was not much chance for talk. But I tell you
now, madame, that when Monsieur Maury came into the apartment and did
not find you, I could see the look go over him that would come to a
child's face if some one that it had believed loved it should strike
it--_tristesse_, and a wonder that such a thing could be! Yes, for a
moment I saw that, as he stood looking about the empty place. You
see, he wanted you! He had come full of love for you. I could tell
this," said Julie with deep wisdom, "for I know the look of love when
I see it, and I know, too, the look when the heart grows cold as a
stone in the breast. That was the way it was. Ah, a great pity you
were not there to meet your husband that first day!"
Her hand dropped from Elsie's shoulder. She waited humbly for some
reply. None came. And the glimpse she had of the face with shrouded
eyes made her think of the death mask of a girl that she had seen
once, made from one of the Seine's suicides,--the same look of
resolute pain, the same fixed irony to the childish lips.
"If you would go back and tell your husband that you are sorry,
madame? Ah, if you would do that!" she sighed.
Elsie turned to her then. She was forlorn, but spirited, burning.
"I was sure that some day you would say this to me. I must set you
right, so that you'll never say it again. You don't understand a man
like my husband, Julie--an American with Scotch traits. You don't
know what his wife's absolute fidelity means to such a man. What I
wrote him has changed me forever to him. I don't believe he _could_
take me back, even if, in a certain, kind way--for he is kind--he
forgave me. He would never forget it--no, never really care for me
again. I am soiled to him, and my value has gone. You can't
understand this stern feeling about woman's purity. Your husband,
after suffering, would take you back and never let it count against
you. The point of view is broader here--different." She took a long
breath, with a small, desperate smile. "Besides, I shall never say
that I am sorry. Let what I've done make a mess of my life--all
right! I shall never be a beggar, and for the best of
reasons--because I am not sorry!"
"You are not--?" Julie stammered.
"No, I am not," Elsie repeated, and now both eyes and voice though
forbidding, were piercingly plaintive. "Not sorry in the way you
would like me to be. I am sorry from the very center of my soul that
Arturo had to die," she said and thrust out her hand for Julie to
take, which she did, and began to knead lovingly the cold, winding
fingers, "and I am sorry that it was necessary to hurt my husband as
by this time that letter has hurt him. But I am glad that I loved a
man as I loved Arturo. I was walled in before, and he brought me
into a sunlight so that I had a glimpse of heaven! He is dead--but
what of that? Does that change everything? Only a few weeks ago I
put my life into his hands! Is all that finished because he is
not--here?" A terrible sadness trembled over her and the look of a
worn-out soul came to her gray gaze. "Do tenderness and loyalty to
one that is loved disappear with their breath? Oh, Julie, Julie!"
... She paused, staggered by the inexpressible. "I could not say
that I am sorry for what that letter stands for--no!--only for the
loss and the pain--to the three of us. So you see I am the woman who
wrote it, and who meant it, though the man for whose sake I wrote
it--has--gone."
There was silence between them. Julie smoothed and then kissed the
hand.
"I see, madame. Yes, I see," she said helplessly, "that you are not
one to wriggle down the easiest road, as I would do. No!--I was
going to tell you to go back to Monsieur Maury, to weep, to kneel
before him and to kiss--even the _foot_--anything, but not to let him
escape you! I wanted you to say to him that all those foolish ideas
about the young marquis came from the madness that begins in the
spring and is so unsettling. I would have had you say that when you
were up on that high mountain at the mercy of the man--and Spaniards,
you know, are so excitable--that the lover held a pistol to your head
until he had made you write the letter, which you did not mean at
all--anything, but not to let your husband slip! For you see a
husband is not only agreeable, but so useful," sighed Julie, "and to
let him get away is like tearing up money. Still, I see now that
this cannot be. I have warned you--but each to herself. I cannot
make you--me!"
A grim drollery had gone over Elsie's ghost-white face at this burst.
She laughed with the sudden sense of fun of a little girl as she
pulled Julie to her and kissed her on the lips, then held her away
from her as her gaze grew grave again.
"Let it content you, then, that you have warned me, dear Julie. And
as you say, each to herself--I to keep the honesty that to me seems
plain decency. It was a struggle for me to get up the sort of
bravery that was needed for me to do the thing I did. Then I must
hold to that bravery. No cringing because my desires miscarried, no
bleating like a sick, frightened sheep to get back into a comfortable
fold. Oh, no--oh, no!"
The tentacles of war fell as grappling hooks upon nations and
unsettled matters of high state. All were not mighty; some were so
minute as scarcely to be visible and quivered their way into the
workshops, alleyways, attics of the little people, made confusion of
obscure lives, pricked at humble hearts.
One of them caught Elsie as a wondering atom when, after only five
days of her service at the glove shop, the shutters were put up there
with these words chalked upon them: "Closed because the owner has
left to join his regiment. _Vive la France!_"
And this was only the beginning. Mobilization had taken Julie's
husband, and she, red-eyed, brave-hearted, was preparing to hurry to
her old mother--if she could be reached--who was not far from the
French frontier at Liége for which the Germans were making. Paris
rang with many sorts of fear and only one purpose,--to save France.
Through this and above it there was an hysterical clamor from the
travelling Americans around whom the tenacles had fastened, producing
complex distresses and also only one purpose,--to get home, to put
the seas between them and this incredible horror with which they felt
they had nothing to do.
Elsie seemed to herself no larger than an ant that yet had room for a
whirling brain, listening to the destruction caused by some appalling
wind storm; solid ground seemed slipping from beneath her. She saw
panic on all sides as she raced about the city, seeking some chance
for her livelihood. Shops were closed everywhere; even the Rue de la
Paix was utterly forlorn. Trains to the coast were in the hands of
the army for mobilization. Stranded Americans were holding mass
meetings at embassies, steamship offices and banks. Transportation
and money were words that lost meaning in the hopeless muddle;
letters of credit went unhonored; ships on which return voyages had
been reserved were withdrawn from passenger service to be used for
war, war, war! She heard of men who had lost automobiles; of women
who on the continent had grown frantic from days' hunger and had paid
for sandwiches with diamonds.
She was at a standstill in this chiaroscuro of dismay when, a few
days after the closing of the glove shop, Julie summed up the crisis
for her:
"I sold the pendant to-day for what I could get--only a thousand
francs--as to-morrow you might not be able to sell it at all. And of
course you cannot now get your luggage at Havre--perhaps never--all
that is swallowed up in the trouble. So with what little money you
have now, madame, we must manage a passage to New York for you as
soon as it can be done. France is no place for foreigners. My poor
country is like an ox that has been hit on the head with a club,
twisting and turning to see some way to help herself. Only the good
God knows what will happen to Paris now! So this is a time when home
is best. Counting out your husband altogether, at least in America
you have your mother--your own flesh and blood. And with us here in
this hell, where your own blood is, madame, is the place for you."
Arturo had said at El Miradero: "Ah, Elsie, you have a fearfully
vivid mind. You see all around an idea." As she listened to Julie,
these words came back to her, for she seemed to see packed Prussian
cavalry riding up the Champs Elysées with the arrogance of owners,
the Prussian eagles on their helmets making a hideous glitter to the
sad eyes of the French crowds watching them. Edging this was a
memory of the streets of New York as they looked from the highest
windows of the high hotels, and as she had so constantly peered down
at them in childhood,--fissures in mountains of battlemented stone
where people appeared as lines of black maggots moving in swirling
ways. With a new pull of intimacy and yearning this New York became
what Julie had pictured,--the spot where she was privileged to stand;
her right; her own. And as Julie had said, it was time to seek one's
own.
A few days later, with kisses, tears, words of hope and promises of
meeting again in better days, Elsie, after forcing a third of her
small capital on her good friend, left her. On a French ship that
sailed packed to the deck rails, with portholes masked and lights
out, she was one of five in a second-class cabin that had been meant
to hold three.
CHAPTER XVIII
They were at breakfast,--the Vinings. At first sight this might call
up a picture of Elsie's mother and the hat creator who was her
husband in a trim room where a table glowed with damask, sparkled
with silver and where a maid, immaculately capped, placed eggs and
bacon before the master in his correct summer flannels and ready for
business.
Quite different. The Vinings were in half-opened bathrobes, Nina
looking scalped under a blue ribbon that hid her hair curlers; an
hotel tray took up the end of a table on which there was a litter
that began with a manicure set, continued to a heap of soiled gloves
ready for the cleaner's, and ended in a half-trimmed hat.
Nina Race, for she was called that about equally with Mrs.
Vining--and Percy approved of it as a note out of the ordinary that
helped business--was balancing a brocaded mule on her toe and
frowning at a letter that had slipped from her limp hand and now lay
on the floor. Nina was as fixedly youthful in type as she had been
in Elsie's childhood, except for those shadowings that come
relentlessly between cheek and chin when men and women get to forty.
Her hair was almost golden this year; her nose was that lovely sort
of a snub that so helps a woman in her fight against Time; she had a
beautiful mouth, much like Elsie's in bowlike form but without its
lovable pensiveness, Nina's curling almost ridiculously, with deep
curves and nicked corners,--a tilted-up redness of gayety; and even
in the cumbersome bathrobe she showed the slimness of a girl with the
height that belongs to about fifteen years.
Percy was hunched over the morning paper, reading the headlines about
the war and speculating on what influence this new, martial note
would have on the season's hats. He was a narrow young man with
weary shoulders, long legs so thin they seemed like lathes under his
clothes, and flat, pointed feet always conspicuous below tight and
short trouser legs in the purple stockings that he usually affected.
He was blond, almost bald at thirty, almost chinless, with pale,
protruding eyes that seldom smiled. He had a light, floating sort of
voice that never strengthened, although he was given to the most
vehement expressions. As he was also a perfect imitation of the
English fop of comic opera, his extravagant statements in languid
accents were of a sort to make one see Bond Street instead of Fifth
Avenue. He was always "keen" for a thing, or it was "quite too
utterly beastly"; it was "top hole", or he was "fed up with it."
For all this lightweight outwardness he was a rock of sense. Even
his seemingly unsuitable marriage was bound to continue a success; he
had contracted it with the caution with which he signed a lease.
Nina adored him, and he had always found the devotion of one person
necessary for his comfort. As she was so much older, she was also
very grateful to him, and this kept his ego pleasantly warmed.
Moreover, she had anticipatory millinery inspirations that made her a
valuable business partner without the depressing need of splitting
profits. And best of all--he liked her.
"Well, Perce," Nina said, tilting the coffee pot to extract the last
drop, "you've read Elsie's letter to me, and you haven't helped me a
bit--"
"Haven't I? I've told you the most important thing--she's stony!
She must be, to put up at that rummy hole down in that ghastly
neighborhood."
"Maybe she's gone there because it's so French. She does such queer,
impulsive things, dearest--always has. If she met some French people
on the ship who were going there, and she liked them, that would be
quite enough for Elsie. She never had my sense of values." She
picked up the letter as she spoke and eyed it drearily.
"Rubbish!" Percy sniffed. "That's not one of the French places; it's
cheap commercial! I tell you," he said again as he rose and lifted
his shoulders briefly in what might have become a yawn, "she's stony.
And it means that she and Maury have had a serious spill--you know
you were afraid of it--that Spaniard! See if I'm not right.
Probably Maury would have told you all about it when he called here
three weeks ago, if we'd been in town and before he went off again
somewhere--Pittsburgh, didn't they say at his office, when you
telephoned? And you remember how he wrote on his card that he was
sorry not to see you!--even said very sorry, I remember."
"Oh, he'd say that anyway, coming for the first time, after being
away years--"
"Ah, but he called twice, you see! Now take it from me, your very
original daughter broke loose some way--Maury found it out--they've
parted--and for the present, at least, she's on the rocks! Let me
hear her letter again. I only glanced at the thing."
"'Dear Muv,'" Nina began obediently.
"F-f-f--h!" This was a mincing sound of nausea from Percy. "How I
hate her tacking 'mother' to you. Can't see why you, a woman in the
public eye, ever had a child. Doesn't fit your type at all. Too
utterly dreary!"
"Well, I had her, and I have her still!" Nina sparkled as she curled
herself in the armchair, for she had never liked what she called "the
mother stunt" and revelled in being told that she did not look the
part. "Besides, there is something in it, Percy, that you, not being
a mother, can't understand. I've got to go to Elsie and see what I
can do for her--just got to."
"Go on with the letter," Percy remarked darkly.
"... I reached here last night after a most exciting and
uncomfortable voyage. No doubt you have seen Robert by this time, or
heard from him of what has happened and how things are with us.
There is more to tell you--things that he does not know about yet. I
won't write of it, and please don't telephone me. This is not a
thing to be talked of that way. I want you here, muv. Don't imagine
I'm going to burden you and Mr. Vining--"
"Rather not!" Percy interrupted. "Why the deuce should I be burdened
with a married woman that I've never seen, just because she goes
dotty over a foreign bounder?"
"You _are_ a silly," Nina cooed. "You don't know what you're talking
about, dear. Arturo is a Spanish marquis--one of the oldest names in
Spain. And handsome?--the man's a dream! Why, let me tell you that
if he'd take the trouble to come over here, he could marry any one of
a dozen of multimillionaires' daughters as easily as turning his
hand. I saw women of fortune and title run after him shamelessly,
yet for nearly two years he's never looked at one of them--quite mad
about Elsie. So don't be too hard on her. She was as ignorant of
the world as a baby until she went to Paris and was left there all
alone to plunge at her own, impulsive will. Besides, she's a
girlish, sweet thing--doesn't look a day over twenty. It's not the
least bit surprising to me that Don Arturo completely turned her
head!"
"And now we have the trouble of turning it back," Percy said, as he
went concavely into the bedroom. "Go on talking. I can hear you
from here."
"Where was I?" Nina muttered, bending over the letter again:
"... to burden you and Mr. Vining. I simply want you to help me in
the first steps that must be taken--"
"Divorce!" Percy called out with a conclusive, smacking sound. "I
forgot she said that. It's divorce as plain as the nose on your
face!"
"...So come as soon as you get this. Come in the morning. But oh,
let me ask you one thing--don't come to criticize or scold me--"
"Impertinent, I call that!" Percy snapped. "My word--!"
... What's done, is done. Help me to piece together what I have
left. Please come right away.--Faithfully--Elsie."
"Not a word of affection!" Percy appeared at the door with his head
through a China silk shirt whose bold purple bars gave it the effect
of a diminutive awning. "Make a note of that, my dear--" and his
bulging eyes had a mean smirk, "your dear daughter merely means to
make use of you. She doesn't even try to hide it."
"That's Elsie," said Nina, as she folded the letter, uncurled
herself, and passed him into the bedroom. "She's always been so
outspoken. To tell you the truth, she doesn't love me--and in a way,
I can't blame her."
"What does that mean, may I ask?"
"She was too affectionate as a child, and I didn't encourage it,"
Nina said lightly. "She was always asking me to kiss her, and often,
when I was going out, all ready for the stage, she'd put her arms
around me so hard and tight she'd take my breath away. At last, on
one night that I remember--she was about eleven and in bed early
because she had a cold or something--I came in to say good-night to
her. She sprang up and clutched me as if she were insane. 'You
haven't kissed me for three days,' she said, and her eyes had a
craving, wild kind of look. 'I counted them!' 'And I won't kiss you
for three more,' I said, getting away from her, all twisted. 'You
paw so,' I couldn't help saying, for I was furious, 'and I hate being
pawed!' I never forgot the queer change that went over her, the look
she fixed on me. If I'd suddenly turned into a snake before her, she
couldn't have grown more still and terrified. 'I won't--any more,'
she said, and slipped face down among the bedclothes. And to tell
you the truth, Perce, she kept her word. In fact, it worried me how
silent and cold she grew when alone with me, so that at last it was I
who would sometimes go and kiss her. She'd let me--I can't say
more--just _let_ me, for I never had a real kiss from her again, not
even on her wedding day," said Nina, who was now powdering neck and
face with a lavishness that filled the air with a mist. "No, she
doesn't love me as girls love their mothers, and doesn't pretend to."
"I know I'll simply detest her," said Percy in a mincing yet
implacable way, as he wriggled his foot into a pump. "I hate that
straightforward sort of person--always conceited. I'd take my time
about hurrying to her, I can tell you!"
"I shall get to her as fast as a taxi can take me," Nina replied
affably. "You see, Perce, you're not a mother."
"I know I'm not!" he screamed in thin-sounding exasperation. "You
said that before. And as--obviously--it would be impossible for me
to be a mother, please don't say it again!"
It was close to three o'clock when Nina appeared at the hat shop.
This word was never used by the Vinings; they called it the "place"
or the "business." And outwardly it no more suggested millinery than
it did hardware. The one imposing plate-glass window, flat on Fifth
Avenue, was as deep as a small room, and in it were several things--a
fall of Italian lace, a carpet of ancient embroidery, a vase made of
gilded wicker work from which flowers trailed, and a small, stuffed
white goat with one lifted hoof placed airily on the vase--but not a
hat in sight. Only Percy had the answer to this mystifying
decoration and he gave it to no one but Nina:
"You say you don't understand the window, my dear? That's exactly
the effect I wanted. What people can't understand, they remember.
Besides to get a _peep_ at a Vining hat they've got to come
inside--and when they do, it's the fly walking into the arms of the
spider! Clever? Ra-_ther!_"
Percy was carefully crushing a flapping Leghorn of the shepherdess
type over the left eye of a portly woman who should have worn the
matron's toque of saner days.
"You have something about you--a _je ne sais quoi_--for this
simplicity, madam," he was saying as Nina entered. "It does not
matter that the face is a trifle--full--since you have that youthful
expression--"
He saw that Nina had a jaded, almost a tousled air as she closed the
door on the baking street. After flinging one look eloquent of
unhappy news to him, she passed without speaking through the show
room into their sanctum at the back, where the accounts were made up
and where their most profitable customers often had tea, or something
in a cup that looked like it but whose resemblance ended with the
color.
She was sipping a gin and lemon when he came in after completing the
iniquitous sale. She had flung off her hat and was clutching her
head.
"Oh, Perce," she said and flapped one of her small hands close to her
ear as a landed, half-dead fish does its tail, "oh, my dear!--"
"As bad as that?" came from his contracted mouth. He sat before her,
doubled over, and hugged a lifted knee. "Cough it up," he said,
forgetting for the moment to be vulgar in some British way.
She talked with weary breaks for five minutes, during which he made
no sound and, when she had finished, Elsie's story was plain to the
last detail. Percy's look, at first peevish, had become savage. He
hated anything that took attention from himself or disturbed his
personal routine. This daughter of his wife's was doing both and had
become, as well, a disgraced petitioner instead of the newly rich
benefactor who might have put money into his business and whom he had
intended to flatter with that end in view. His sudden hatred of her
had the potency of vitriol.
"That letter she sent!" Nina said desperately. "Oh, a terrible
letter!--didn't leave her a peg to stand on. I made her go over
every word of it. She told Robert she didn't care a pin about him
any more, that she was madly in love with Arturo, was writing it up
in his mountain place, all alone with him, was going to stay on with
him for the rest of her life, and told Robert to divorce her at
once." She gazed at him in flat helplessness. "And now the Spaniard
is--_dead_! And if she hadn't sent that letter the whole thing could
be dismissed, for you see she did nothing seriously wrong--"
"Hadn't the chance," Percy rasped.
"Chance or not, she was kept from the extreme madness. The whole
thing could be smothered up as a foolish escapade--only for that
awful letter! Oh, I feel as if I'd go crazy."
"And you say she won't try to get back with Maury? Won't beg him--?"
"Beg?" Nina almost screamed. "I wish you'd heard her! She'd see me
dead at her feet rather than open her mouth."
"Then as she's a dashed lunatic, you must go to him--tell him how the
fellow was killed before the affair had started--"
Nina was almost too tired to continue. "Oh, Perce," she sniffed into
a corner of her handkerchief, "I did. I went straight to his office
away downtown, and without a bit of lunch. Robert wasn't there. He
won't be back till to-morrow. Besides," she said with deeper
hopelessness, "between ourselves, I don't believe that anything I
could say to him would do a bit of good. It wouldn't count with his
conscientious sort that something like a thunderbolt had happened to
prevent Elsie from living with De Burgos--"
"He wouldn't believe it," Percy interposed. "I don't myself. No man
would! Up in the mountains--scene all set as she wrote--and then she
back here as pure as an Easter lily? 'Nay, nay, Pauline!'--too
thick, too thick!"
"_He_ might believe it, but it wouldn't help. Robert Maury sees
straight colors. With him white and black never mix to make gray. A
woman is worth while--or she is not. She's straight--or she's
crooked. He'd only consider that his wife had allowed a man to make
love to her, and that her intention--set forth in ink--had been to
live with that man, and chuck _him_. Oh--it's just terrible!" she
ended on a wretched sigh.
"Then she's not going to make any play at all to get back. And, as
you say she is against taking any help from him, it can only mean
that she's going to try and fasten down on us like a leech. But I be
dashed if--!"
"No, there's just one mite of hope. After I'd talked myself hoarse
for an hour, showing how it was only Robert's right to know _where_
she was, so he could get the matter settled--the divorce, you
know--she wrote him a few lines and asked him to come to the hotel
to-morrow afternoon. Just that--not another word. You'd think she
was writing to--to--a piano tuner!" Nina said, and with eyes closed
in exhaustion finished the gin.
"She's dotty! A bally lunatic!" was Percy's summing up.
CHAPTER XIX
The August day had a deadly heat; there was humidity without sun,
except as it came like the suggestion of a burning lens through the
mist. Vagrants slept flagrantly in the public gaze on the benches in
Union Square. Men, carrying hats, with heads sagging backward to
keep their chins from the touch of damp collars, and women in blouses
as transparent as their veils moved with an effort and a resentful
look as of creatures making an undesired way in an element not their
own. Touring cars held the only refreshed ones, in town for the day
from country homes.
The physical discomfort was without acuteness for Elsie. She had
gone for a morning walk to escape from the boxlike hotel bedroom and
was now dragging herself and her thoughts up the rise of Fifth Avenue
that was capped by a lilac-tinted cloud. She was in a curious mood.
Critical as this hour was for her, she did not seem to care. Her
talk with her mother had but emphasized the distance between them,
made her see with the clear eyes of the disillusionized her pressing
need of self-helpfulness in a world grown dismayingly big and that
was able to exist successfully without a thought of her. Yet the
knowledge, instead of biting in as it had in Paris, left her
unconcerned.
When she had written to Robert, because she could not refuse Nina's
abjectly frantic appeal, she had felt cold fear of him; that had gone
quickly with all the rest into the apathy that formed the present.
In this raw hour, the meeting with him ahead of her, she had sharp
sense only for the past. A secret temple, swimming in light, seemed
to be in the depths of herself; and there she glowed answeringly, for
there all that was finished was alive again.
Elsie was one of those sensitive to the magic of memory. Under it
the dream figure of the dead could walk beside her, become the
poignant thing; the "vanished hand" hold hers. She was back in
Paris--years before--her first days, when every charming impression
had the potency of a discovery. Ah, the blue morning haze enwrapping
the great Arch on its rise; the sunset making it as a door into the
sky. And the dear smells--the tang of warmed asphalt with cool odors
from the Seine, the scent of the chestnut blossoms along the Champs
Elysées and from the hyacinths and narcissi in the many vendors'
carts,--all the magic of Paris when it is spring. Then her meeting
with Arturo--the headiness that began; the bewitched confusion. As
this became the love of the later time, she was with him in the
Longueval garden, the melting voice of the English contralto seeming
to plead for him: "Come back to me, beloved, or I die!" With racing
blood she was beside him in the upper hall at El Miradero, the
storm's stridor filling the trembling house as he swept away her
defenses with the yearning of his prayer and the soft fire of his
lips. She did not see him dead. Not to-day.
Yes, it was a curious mood and a profitless one, for this pull of the
lost had no value in the world struggle before her; ah, no value at
all. Still it held, and the dead walked close to her, spoke her
name, smiled at her. Up the avenue and then down, she went
heavily,--she and her sweet torment.
This relaxed somewhat as she reëntered the hotel; it was so shabby,
harsh, so visibly a part of her new decadence. And when the clerk
handed her a memorandum to the effect that Mr. Maury had telephoned
and would call at four o'clock, the spell broke, sank quite away.
Hard, her breath held back, the cold fear of yesterday crept over her
again and tightened. She stared at the words as at the face of a
judge.
After that her thoughts centered on the future,--its first fragment
this interview with Robert that had to be, before _finis_ was written
between them. It was an ugly necessity. She would have shirked it
but for Nina; would have kept hidden from him, reduced to a memory,
while he took what course he pleased. As he had to be faced, she
tried to get hold upon what was in her of the practical. She had
been starkly honest with him in her letter from El Miradero. Let her
only be passive and honest still, while he would tell her briefly how
their joint freedom was to be obtained, and then he would go away.
It need not be too hard if she but nerved herself to a sort of stony
philosophy and acquiescence.
She put on one of the plain gowns that she had bought as suitable for
a worker in the Paris shop,--a straight gray linen much like a large
apron with sleeves, and with a turned-over, boyish white collar under
which a length of black silk was knotted. She did not touch her face
except to powder it. Although she still had with her all the toilet
trickeries that once had seemed so alluring, she had lost the
enthusiasm necessary for their use, even in the most restrained way;
they belonged to a woman who had had the heart to be vain.
She was ready at a few moments after three. The time, that at first
had seemed to crawl, began to suggest an opponent determined to take
her strength. Somewhere, lately, in her reading she had seen a word
"harrier-hard"; it had brought her the picture of a hunting dog that
held like steel on a taut leash, and she had told herself that she
must be like that,--harrier-hard. But when she felt every moment of
waiting ten times its length, she dreaded what at the end of so many
of them her physical ebb-tide and her thoughts in that dingy room
would do with her. She dreaded feeling soft, tearful, lonely, and of
having Robert Maury see that she was these things. That must not be.
For she had no repentance. The plea of the woman who has made a
blunder through misconception of herself was not for her. She had
loved Arturo,--she had, and did still. As she had told Julie, her
regret was for the pain edging that truth and for the fatality that
had turned her hopes into tragedy.
These several anxieties gradually lessened before another that nipped
like a gnat,--her mother might arrive just ahead of Robert, or, even
worse, while he was there. She was about to try to reach Nina on the
telephone and warn her to stay away when word came up from the office
that Mrs. Vining was calling. And it lacked only ten minutes of four!
Elsie straightened and kept her eyes on the door, desperation
darkening them. This look, with the Quakerish gravity of her gown,
was so like an attack upon Nina when she clicked in on the slippers
that were as absurdly tiny as their buckles were huge, that she stood
still in the doorway, her first planned phrase shattered.
"You should have come earlier," Elsie said, the words nervous and
rushed together. "You can't stay now, muv. Robert will be here in a
few moments."
"Oh, so he's coming!" Nina entered eagerly, her face radiant. "Well,
my dear, you've put on just the right thing to make a good
impression; you're like a schoolgirl, pale, and with lovely shadows
under your eyes from studying too hard! There are a few other things
I want to say to you--"
"Don't say them." Elsie's tense hands urged her prayerfully to the
door. "Can't you see that if you talk I'm likely to go to pieces?"
"Goodness, am I so terrible?" Nina pouted. "Well, I'll go--but just
listen to this--I didn't dare speak to Percy as I promised you, about
giving you a berth as saleswoman with him. He'd have snapped my head
off! So, dear," and she held fast to the knob, determined to finish,
"_do_ remember how hard it is for any one to get work just now with
the summer and this war! And _do_ remember that while of course
you'll easily marry again, the preliminaries _do_ require a little
time--now don't they? And so, dear," she sighed conclusively, by
this time in the hall, "if Robert insists on your taking a small
income, even though, as you said, he isn't a mite to blame and you
are--_do_ take it. But anyway, if you don't--" A genuine mist here
came to Nina's eyes and she shot an excellently tailored arm over the
gray linen shoulder, "I want you to know that you can count on me,
dear--yes, to my last penny, and Perce can go to the devil! I've got
fifteen hundred of my own in a savings bank that he doesn't know a
thing about, and if the worst comes--it's yours. I thought this all
out, coming down in the taxicab," Nina sniffed, her face wet, as for
the first time since that night in the lonely long ago she felt Elsie
seize her and kiss her lips with a slow, deep warmth.
"What bright things come to you in a taxicab!" she said, a smile
passing over her sad young face. "Ah, so good of you! But never
fear, muv; I won't take your little hoard--"
"Then you must take something from Robert! As he's so generous, it's
but natural he'd--"
"And I'll never do that!" Elsie breathed with a touch of wildness.
"Something will turn up to help me. I'll see, I'll think. Good-by--"
The telephone bell rang.
"Robert!" broke from both in a whisper.
Elsie's lips paled. She seemed for a moment to lose the power of
moving. Afterward she was only dully conscious of answering the
call, saying that Mr. Maury might come up; and of her mother, who
feared to meet him in the halls, retreating with a chair to the
bathroom, as the only place in which she could hide, until he had
gone his way again.
Elsie was left standing between the two closed doors, listening to
the distant clash of the elevator's metal gate and then to an
approaching, well-known step,--easy, firm and long. It paused; there
was a knock.
"Come in," she said in a voice that was not her own to her ears nor
to those of the man who opened the door.
Robert stood with the knob in his hand and looked across at her.
There was not even an attempt at the smile of greeting that the
situation needed as a brace; neither was there any pleasantry,
however trite, to give it the foothold of the commonplace. He seemed
dismayed, as in silence he sent a dragging, uneasy glance around the
drab room, his brows quivering in a characteristic, quizzical frown.
The windows were full on the west, and the sun, that had strengthened
during the afternoon, came through a broken yellow blind and fairly
broiled upon dust, rents and decrepitude.
"Good God, Elsie," he said in flat-toned wonder, "what are you doing
here?"
As she continued silent because she could not speak, he gave a fling
of his loose, sharply straight shoulders and came across the room,
adding: "What's the meaning of your coming to such a place? You had
plenty of money--" He was halted by the defeat that came into her
gaze as it rose and fell, wavering about him, never fully looking at
him.
"Tell me why you came--here?" he repeated.
"I lost my money," she said in a toneless way. "It was stolen from
me."
"Stolen? Well--?" He put his hat and stick on the weak-legged
center table between them. The question in his eyes came through
bright anger. "You could have asked for more--couldn't you? There's
a cable--isn't there? Don't tell me that you were _afraid_ to ask
me!"
She met his eyes then. A look of fierce pride ran like light over
the flower tints of her face. "I never thought of doing such a
thing!"
She had a sharp feeling of still further separation from him. He was
a curious man,--his first words irritation caused by a minor action.
This was in such direct contrast to what might have been expected, it
seemed a chilling eccentricity that affronted her. He was poised
against any shock or wound. Nature had supplied him with some
exclusive sort of comfort by which in a twinkling the most accustomed
thing could change to a cipher. Alone, he was complete! And sharply
against this, she felt herself under his lucidly intelligent eyes a
rootless weed in water that sagged on cross currents.
This impression left her when his look changed quickly,--so quickly
that she was thrilled by it, almost terrified. She could not imagine
sharper regret in any face. Ah, now she felt sure she was seeing him
as he had looked just after reading her letter in the first moment of
unbelief and distress. The thought took on the power of a magnet for
steel, drew her far away to the desk in the room at El Miradero,
where the wall of harsh blue stretched above the ancient cope upon
the bed, and there--while she was impassioned and trembling from the
lover she had just left--it seemed to put the pen between her
fingers, made her write again:
"... He is Don Arturo.... To-night I decided to remain with him....
If I gave him up and went back to you I would be too unhappy to
live.... When I found myself alone with him up in the mountains, the
world and its laws lost their strength.... I could not keep faith
with you.... I gladly give up home, friends, the good opinion of the
world for him.... I am in love--madly in love! ... The truth written
here will be enough to gain you a divorce.... Good-by, Robert....
In all likelihood we'll not meet again...."
This consciousness of a finished act so walled her from the present
that when Robert held out his hand it appeared to come through the
density of substance. His words were even more unexpected:
"I began to be afraid that I was not to see you at all, Elsie," he
said, and his fingers closed about hers in a kind way.
"You wanted to see me?" She asked this with heavy wonder.
"More than anything in the world!" And after a glance that was a
troubled question, he continued in the clipped tones that she
remembered had always meant decision with him. "We have serious
things to say to each other."
She drew away her hand and sat down. "We have. And let us get them
over, please--as long as I'm here! I didn't mean to come back--oh,
never! The war drove me home."
She said this through a shudder. For all his generosity, how paltry
she must look to him--having written that she had gone to another
man--to be before him again, astray, piteous, making the parting hard
for him in spite of his strength.
And oh, how strong he was! She gazed at him across her frayed life.
Standing above her with his finely cut face worn by energy,
discerning eyes under the restless brows, the hair rippling closely
over his head with the effect of a steel-black casque, and wearing
the clothes that always expressed him--browns like the calfskins of
old books and grays like the rocks he worked among--he seemed more
than ever a man of bronze and granite.
The next moment, and while she tried to tell him of Arturo's death,
another act of his surprised her even more than had his handclasp.
His familiar, very individual way of moving--jerkily, yet with a
looseness that was grace--held her silent now as he twirled a chair
to him, dropped to it sideways, clasped his long arms over its back,
and let his eyes rest on her with an affectionate, flickering smile.
"Elsie," Robert said slowly and earnestly, "why didn't you write to
me?"
She heard this clearly,--and felt she had not heard it at all. She
kept an empty gaze upon him.
"You promised you would," he said, an echo of old loneliness through
every inflection. "But I've not had a line from you since the night
in Paris when you left for Spain! Why not?"
CHAPTER XX
So shaken was Elsie that the walls seemed to sway inward and touch
above her. Robert went into the perspective, a gray streak from
which brilliant eyes questioned, and then came back to tower over
her. As the staggering change righted she found herself just as she
had been, sitting in a rocking chair, her hands holding fast to its
sides, and he before her with a studying, gentle look that held
reproach.
"Not a line!" she heard him say. "Wasn't that unnecessarily harsh?"
A shadowy struggle showed in her face. He could not know of the
impulse that made it. She wanted to give utterance to her amazement
and tell the truth in one wild burst; not to tell it; to wait,
although just why she should wait she did not know.
"I hoped you'd tell me to-day that you had written and that the
letter was roving about after me. You see, I had expected to go to
South America a month ago, straight from the West, and some foreign
letters for me that came to New York were sent on there at once. I
do go on to Venezuela quickly now. Nevertheless I ordered my mail
returned here, because I felt sure that among it there would be some
word from you. It's all on its way back now.--The situation between
us, Elsie, has disturbed me to the core. I've kept thinking of it
constantly. I've caught at every possible hope to escape the
seriousness of it. I wouldn't let myself believe that you hadn't
written. Lately I've felt that the confusion of the war had delayed
or lost some recent letter from you. In fact, I've hoped this up to
this very minute--but you didn't write to me, I can see! Didn't
write at all?"
While he was speaking, Elsie, looking past him, had been aware of the
most cautious opening of the bathroom door, only enough to show her
Nina's eyes with a look of wild prayer and a glimpse of her
supplicating hands, urging silence. This was a flash before the door
came between them again.
"No." Elsie said this on a suspended breath. "I didn't," she added
with more force, though a clutch had come upon her throat as the lie
struggled through.
Color went darkly over Robert's face and a look that was out of
keeping with its sharp strength,--of naïve, boyish dejection. "I
don't think I deserved that. I could never have been so
inconsiderate of you."
She made no answer; instead, sat gazing at him with a touch of the
awestruck uncertainty that comes to eyes on a sudden awakening.
"You got _my_ letters, of course." His voice was now almost coldly
patient, the tone of one who starts to examine some troubling thing
in a dispassionate way.
"One--I think. Yes, I remember. One came from London before you
sailed."
"That went to Paris. But there were others. I wrote you fully half
a dozen. One almost at once went from the ship to the Spanish
address you gave me; later ones went to the Ritz to be held for you.
Didn't you go back there?"
"No."
"Where did you go?"
"I stayed at--at--" She edged from saying she had lived in Julie's
home.--"at a small place in the Latin Quarter. I told you my money
was stolen. I was ill, too. Julie, my maid, was with me."
"And you never thought that I would write you to the Ritz? Why that
seems to me the first thing that would naturally have occurred to
you!" He frowned helplessly, so astray by this fact that for a few
seconds doubt shadowed the steady, blue gaze. "Something hidden
here? What eludes me?" it asked.
While recognizing his look as the charged wire requiring careful
handling, Elsie made no effort to reassure him, the recklessness of
honesty mixing with deceit. "I forgot the Ritz," she said, the tone
deadened.
At the same time she had sense of being several intelligences that
worked together and yet independently. With one she saw the
situation as Robert, not yet having had her letter, saw it. With a
second she lived through the agonies of her secret story in
flashes,--most keenly those hours when, as a forlorn light-o'-love,
she was cast out of El Miradero, wild and lost, her soul sick from
shame. And with still another there came a flare of what might await
her, at least in the present, if she persisted in her lie. Help was
there and hope, a sedative to banish the hideous feeling of belonging
nowhere; escape from the aftermath of loss. And all of these could
be paid for by her as the woman who is wanted by a man can always pay.
It was this last that whipped her to her feet, stirred deeply,
open-eyed to the cowardice with which she was juggling. The writer
of that farewell could not evade it, be false to it. She could not
so outrage the one precious thing left to her out of the
wreck,--fidelity to the loved dead, and desperate pride in it. She
did not want to go back. She could never again be Robert's wife.
Her heart was in a grave. Her brain heaved under the onslaught of
these resolves, and the truth, already at her lips, had almost rushed
over them when Robert drove them away. With one of his quick lunges
over the chair's back he had seized her wrist.
"I understand so well just how things are between us," she heard him
say. "We've played recklessly with our lives during these years
apart; we've grown apart, we have changed. But it isn't too late to
start again. I could not bear to lose you, Elsie!"
He was kneeling on the chair as very gently he drew her nearer,
taking her hand seriously in both of his. His face was strong with
reasonableness, humble in a plea as he went on:
"After I left you in Paris, I felt dissatisfied with myself.
Something--what's called the Scotch conscience, I suppose--got after
me on the ship when I had plenty of time for thinking things out. I
saw how the whole business of life had been wrong with us for years.
That was why I had suffered such disappointment in Paris. I had
slowly grown self-sufficient--oh, hideously so--and you were
confusingly different that day from the memory I had treasured of
you! You don't look so now--not at all the same creature. Now
you're the girl I knew--so little changed from my first sight of you
at Nina's wild card party six years ago and more, that it's really
uncanny."
"I am not the same, though," Elsie flashed, a bitter twist moving
over her beautiful mouth. "Don't imagine it."
"Ah, well--of course years do leave traces, even when they're not
seen. But you're real now, so unlike what you were on that day in
Paris when your three years there seemed to have damaged you in some
ugly and sophisticated way, given you a cynical mind as well as a
strange face! I wanted nothing but to get away from you and readjust
myself to the depressing change. And you?--I know you felt just as
divided from me--that you snatched at the chance I gave you of going
to Spain, to your friends. Yet, while you wanted this, I could see
that you resented my eagerness to have you go. Well--there's no use
digging further into the causes for what has resulted. I ask you to
come with me to South America, and I'll try to make you happy. I
don't want you ever to leave me again. I love you, Elsie!"
She shook her head slowly. Deep regret gave body to her words when,
after a pause, they came. "I don't love you, Robert. I'm sorry. I
cannot go back to you."
He dropped her hands. The blood surged up his face in a painful way
that was the voice of his humiliation; ebbed as quickly, leaving it
ashen under its brown and clouded over as if an inner light had been
snapped out. He went to the open window and gazed at the mist
streaks through the heavy sun.
Elsie, aware that the bathroom door had opened very slightly and
closed again, did not give it a glance. She sat down, her clasped
hands on the table and waited. The look of defeat on Robert's face
had touched her to passionate sympathy. She would be glad to end
this meeting without mention of the letter. When at last it overtook
him, she would not be there to see its bitter effect on him. And if,
through some maze of chance, this never happened and he never read
those lines, still better; he would be spared that added twist of the
screw.
Several moments passed, the room silent save for the streets'
clangor, before he turned. When she felt his shadow sway over her as
he bent across the table, she looked up.
"Then come back as a friend," he said earnestly. "Don't refuse me
this! Let us start again that way. Come with me to South America.
I would be very lonely not seeing you at all and troubled about you,
too. This would give the old feeling a fighting chance to revive, as
separation could not. And whenever you might wish to go, you'd be
perfectly free to do so. As a friend, Elsie? Shall we make that
compact? What do you say?"
She sat in the shadow, watching him in a way that was rapt. Her
fluttering hair sparkled about her face, giving a luminous quality to
its pallor that reminded Robert of flowers of delicate tint, drained
of all color by the dusk, yet shining within it. A strange longing
had come to her hollowed and bright eyes; a hushed look that he could
not understand, as if she had stumbled on something valuable and with
doubting surprise was trying to believe in its reality. This was
exactly what had taken place in her soul.
Could what he asked come true? She did not believe it. And yet,
Arturo was dead, and this living man whose remembered kindness had
always been an unescapable thread about her heart, even when it had
ached with intense love for another, needed her. If she could ever
say good-by to despair and again count love as the sum of her life,
how good if it could be for this husband whom she had failed! He had
asked for a fighting chance. And in spite of her doubt, might there
be one--_providing the letter never came into his hands?_
For the first time since the moment when to her question: "Dead?"
Serafin had answered: "Yes," life, in its collapse under the crust of
desolation, stirred for her. She had faint sense of a glow, a fancy
of quickened days beyond some as yet unseen horizon where things
might matter once more and to-morrows beckon. On that feeling spring
seemed to peep into the dismal room, a garden to blow its scent
through the window.
Her eyes sank before Robert's gaze, neutral save that it was earnest.
From the deep well of womanhood in her a galling drop welled up for
her deception, even while she muttered with broken eagerness: "Yes,
yes, yes."
CHAPTER XXI
Soon after this, Robert left. Nina stole out. She was transformed.
She found Elsie sitting at the table, leaning on her elbows, her
hands arched above her eyes. At sound of a convulsive gurgle from
her mother she lifted her head, and her look had a wilting effect on
Nina's triumph. It seemed to see things far beyond and around her,
and there was a physical sickness in it.
"Don't say you're glad!" broke from her, a threat.
Nina held her breath. "I _am_ glad," she found courage to cry
defiantly. "You've saved yourself. Of course I'm glad. Some one
cares for you. You've got a future. You're not a bankrupt!"
"I'm worse. I'm a liar!" Her face changed startlingly to a look of
inward collapse through which the eyes had the poignancy of a hunted
thing, listening. She leaped up. "I can't do it," came from her on
a whisper, pitched wildly and high. "I don't know why I said I
would. I want to be free. I want to go away--"
"Go where?" Nina demanded in angry fright. "Tell me where you'll
go?"
"I don't know. I can try--somehow. I want to try. I can't do
this--begin the life of a cheat. I can't understand how I thought I
could do it. I hate myself. But it's not too late. I can get away
now. You stay here. Tell Robert when he comes--tell him anything--I
don't care what. Tell him about Arturo--and the letter--what I said
in it!"
There was a distracted, fanatic look about her as she rushed to the
closet and pulled a hat from the shelf. While she tried with
uncertain fingers to pin it on, Nina ventured to touch her
appealingly on the shoulder.
"Don't try to make me stay! It's nothing to you that I think what I
do--feel what I do!" broke from Elsie on an angry sob. "You only
want me in a home, looked after by a husband--with money! You won't
let yourself see that I'm suffering because the man I loved is dead.
You don't realize--or care--that it's of him I think and not of
Robert at all--oh, not at all!" she finished on a thin wail.
Nina could only wait. She sat down in an exhausted way, terrified,
and watched Elsie, as with pupils dilated, her look one of raging
resolve, she put her folded coat on the table, opened and closed a
bureau drawer in a search for gloves. She was dragging these on, her
mouth giving nervous twitches, when Nina, as well as her weakness
permitted, began to speak:
"You are running off. All right. But there's just one thing I want
you to think about." There was a reasonableness in the tone that she
could see brought her a shade of Elsie's attention, the while she
continued her preparations.
"Well, what is it? I haven't long. You can send my trunk after me.
I'll go to some other hotel--there's one on the next street--"
Nina changed. She grew frantic and sat forward, beating her small
fists on her knees: "I want you to forget yourself for a moment!" she
cried, the tone like a flung missile, scorn in it. "I want you to
think of what the word _mercy_ means!"
Elsie paused to look at her in a dumb way, puzzled.
"I'm not going to judge or scold you for this wretched thing that
happened. It happened. And it's over. But there's Robert Maury's
side to this," Nina went on, with control of herself, though still
forcefully. "It's got to be considered--and now is the time."
"No, no," Elsie said with bitter sadness. "Talking of that won't
help at all."
"I may at least ask what he has done to deserve the deliberate
cruelty that you are planning to hand out to him? Have you any
reason for causing him this shock and suffering when the whole
episode that supplied it is finished--finished to the uttermost? No,
you have none. So it must be that you hate him! And why should you
hate him? Is it because he still cares for you?" she tersely
demanded.
Elsie's head had been lifting in denial and at the last words a spasm
of pain softened her face. "Hate him? You say that while you know
it's not true!"
"Well--then?" Nina demanded on a shrug that was a repetition of her
questions.
"I have a tender feeling for Robert--liking--and pity, great pity.
I'm not worth his caring, I know."
"And because you pity him, and because you feel you don't deserve his
love--is that why you are determined that he shall not escape?"
"The least I can do is to be honest with him--not lie to him!"
"Sometimes a lie is a virtue. I tell you that--flat! The lie you
told to-day had mercy in it. And if you take it back--you'll be
brutal."
"We don't see things the same way," Elsie said with tremulous
intensity. "Robert's sure to suffer, whatever way we look at it.
He'll suffer when you tell him why I've gone. But if I did what you
want me to do, he'd suffer more when--at last--he found me out."
Nina went to her side. She was too clever to caress Elsie in her
present mood,--seemingly quiet, wistfully defensive, with a dangerous
flame underneath. She merely laid the rosied nail of her right
forefinger upon the table as if pointing to what she described, and
met her daughter's eyes, her own look one in which there was no
emotion, only bright, concentrated force.
"But that's exactly what I mean. See here! He need not have one
unhappy moment because of this--not if you, from kindness alone, take
it upon yourself to prevent his finding out. It rests with you to
keep that chapter in Spain from ever becoming known to him--no word
of it!"
"And how can that be done?" Elsie asked with a weary wonder and
unbelief.
"He wants you to go to South America with him. He does this meaning
to try to get you back. Of course! And suppose he should
succeed?--wouldn't that be the best thing that could happen to you?
And suppose he failed?--couldn't you leave? But putting all that to
one side, your real reason for going and your real work there would
be to get your hands on that letter. You could manage to stay long
enough for that. If, then, you felt you had to get away, you know
that Robert would keep his promise to you, wouldn't lift a finger to
hold you. Could anything be simpler?" Unconsciously she found
herself uttering one of Percy's London expressions in Percy's
helpless tone: "Now--I ask you!"
Elsie drew away gently and stood at a distance, an uneasy figure, her
head heavily hanging. Oh, the many things she saw! The confusion,
past, present and to come. There seemed to be about her a web whose
shuttle had split and set the coils leaping, while she, an atom, was
fighting the blinding tangles for foothold and a loophole of escape.
And as she remained so in the room's deep quiet, Nina, who
breathlessly watched, saw her look of sickness fade and a hot
brightness spread over her face.
"Keep it from reaching him?" she murmured. Her head swayed slightly
in negation as she added, "I wish I could!--how could I? Why," and
she turned to look fully at her mother, "it may come any moment!"
"And it may be at the bottom of the sea!" Nina replied swiftly,
holding to the impression she saw she was beginning to make on Elsie.
"In fact, just about the time the letter must have been on its way
over, I remember reading that a liner was wrecked--the people all
saved--but the ship left to break on rocks somewhere, and of course
all its cargo lost. So ten to one that's the explanation, and the
wretched thing will never bob up at all! Just the same, to be quite
sure, there's only one thing to be done; go with Robert, be nice and
friendly with him, and should the letter come--manage to steal it.
If--let us say--after six months it hasn't appeared, you may feel
sure it never will."
Elsie sat down. With her coat folded on her knees and her gloved
hands clasped upon it, she seemed an unhappy stranger in the hotel
room. The asthenic sadness that with women so easily reaches
conclusion in weak tears, brought them from her dull, wide-opened
eyes. Nina watched her, and the picture that in spite of youth she
made--one broken in purpose, wearily at sea--sent a stab through her
heart of a quality new to her.
"My poor dear, you _have_ made a mess of things!" she cried in pain.
"I hate going with him--to cheat him. He takes me so on faith,
he's--so decent!" Elsie muttered, her hands twisting over each other
in a grinding perplexity. "I don't see how I can do it."
Nina, suddenly very tired, was aware of every year of her age as she
got slowly upon her feet. Well, she would make one more effort and
if she failed she would give up, go home to Percy, and to a much
needed gin and seltzer.
"There's something I didn't speak of before and that you seem to have
forgotten--it's this: That letter makes you out what you never
actually were--De Burgos's mistress. It's only fair that you should
try to destroy it." Her gaze, with intent meaning, held Elsie's into
which had come the look of one edging from the unendurable. After a
pause she went on winningly: "And yet this is not your reason for
trying to get hold of it. You'll be doing that all for Robert's
sake--nothing selfish in it!"
"You think not?" Elsie flung back with a stark honesty. "You're
wrong! Any bit of good opinion that's mine, I want to keep. After
what I've been through--" and her bitter smile had corrosive
knowledge, "oh, I put a high value on men's respect!"
Somewhere across the sun-baked roofs a church clock struck six, and
the brazen strokes on the glare and dinginess had a hideous effect on
Nina, as if they were a summons to execution.
"Well, dearie?" she sighed, her childish eyes grown dim, her whole
air jaded. "Robert will be along soon now. So make up your mind."
Elsie's lips moved desperately. She stood up and slowly drew off her
gloves. "I'm going with him." And then, as her mother began to cry
from such relief as she had never known, while muttering, "Oh,
darling--oh, darling--!" Elsie spoke again quietly and with deep
conviction, "But I'll pay. Make no mistake! I'll pay for cheating.
Something tells me this."
Nina thought it wise to ignore these words, in fact to avoid all
further discussion. Without an instant's delay she started Elsie at
packing the valise and busied herself with the trunk, while keeping
up a running chatter of her past triumphs in Caracas and other South
American cities. When the work was finished she arranged her nose
veil, pulled on her dogskin gloves, and took Elsie into a smothering
embrace.
"Don't worry," she advised in a satisfied and profoundly wise tone.
"Trust to luck! Be a gambler! If I were in your place I'd make
myself see my life as a clear road before me, and I'd not worry for a
minute about this trouble ever suddenly coming around the next
corner!"
She was startled at feeling a hard tremor seize Elsie, and drew back
to study her. "What on earth's the matter?" she cried. "What did I
say? You look positively terrified! What is it?"
"Nothing, nothing. Don't let us talk any more."
Nina tripped off. She did not want to meet Robert so soon after this
intimate dissension and its mending. She was also in a hurry to
carry her good news to Percy and plan a dinner for four at
Delmonico's for the next night. Moreover, she felt urgent need of
her afternoon stimulant. "God knows I've earned it," she thought as
the taxicab rushed her uptown.
Elsie, alone, sat listening to every sound from the hotel, an odd
stillness around her heart. Robert would arrive in a few moments.
If the letters, reforwarded from South America, had been waiting for
him at his office?--If among them there had been the gray-blue square
with the Spanish stamp?--Nina's words, with an effect the reverse of
what she had intended, were like a horrid nudge: _The next corner!_
... She was not to forget it. She was not to escape it. Day by day
she would have to watch it. Even now her eyes were on it, fixed as
they were on the door into the hall, waiting for it to open to give
her the first sight of Robert's face on his return.
CHAPTER XXII
A February morning, very warm, yet full of life. Capricious winds
were abroad; they rippled the blue lake of Valencia, careened up and
down the lower ranges of mountains enclosing the small, North Andean
city of the same name, and over the smiling land blew the thick
sweetness of magnolias from gardens and the thin, sharp scent of
_cinchona_ shrubs and screw pines growing wild.
One of the loveliest hours of the day was enticingly upon the
_hacienda_ that had been the home of the Maury family since the
preceding September. The many servants, both negroes and _mestizos_,
had finished the morning settling of the house, and subdued sounds of
labor with snatches of syncopated Spanish song floated from the
kitchen quarters where they were preparing the mid-day _almuerzo_.
The _patio_ had patches of shadow under the galleries and wherever
the planted palms stood up like great plumes. Turkish rugs clung as
if they were thin, iridescent skins to the flagged space beside the
fountain in the center, whose splash was a whispering song. There
were cane couches; chairs of hide stretched over wooden frames; and
on one table, sheltered by a huge red and white umbrella, books, a
bowl of fruit, and embroidery in the process of making were scattered.
It was the hour when a woman might well have loved to loiter there,
to read, work, or dream. And yet the young mistress of the place was
not to be seen. Nor was she ever visible there at this time of the
day; nor in her room; nor indeed in the house at all.
This thought was in the mind of Miss Selena Maury as she stood in the
doorway, her eyes narrowed and glinting in a look of reflection. She
was Robert's sister, fifteen years his senior, and had the management
of "El Iris," as the place was called because of its rainbow coloring
from trees, flowers, pink walls, inner shutters of jade-green seen
through the window bars, and its pot-tiled roof of a curious dusty
red.
Her invitation to be her brother's guest and helper had come about
casually. With a woman friend, a widow of comfortable means, she had
been for many years one of those feminine expatriates who travel
tirelessly, live in trunks, who are met with all over the world and
are always American. When this lifelong friend had died during a
stay in near-by Colombia, and had been buried there, Robert had seen
his sister's sudden loneliness as a call for him to comfort her,
while at the same time helping himself and Elsie. She had lived much
in Spanish and South American boarding houses, spoke the language
fluently, was capable, sensible, and he believed simple and kindly.
By installing her as housekeeper Elsie would be relieved of
responsibility in a land whose customs were strange to her. She
would also have a compatriot's companionship during his absences of
three or four days at the Logrono mine that was more than fifty miles
away. His subtler and more precious reason for wanting her was to
lighten the _tête-à-tête_ between himself and his wife that could not
help becoming strained at times.
Elsie had been willing for Selena to come, just as she was amiably
attentive to all his suggestions,--a mood of acceptance that rarely
varied and under which he was conscious of some deadness of soul.
She had not been expectant of Miss Maury's arrival which had happened
in November, nor had she been indifferent to a degree that showed the
smallest lack of courtesy. Her tonelessness, though, could not be
escaped. Robert felt that she was with his sister as she was often
with him, shut off in some subtle sense from the things she moved
among. Neither sullen nor inattentive in any way that could
wound--for frequently he had seen her rouse herself to some special
act of interest and kindness--he still saw plainly that his sister
meant nothing in her reckoning.
All of this was felt by Selena Maury. But while Robert was conscious
of Elsie's detachment with a generous regret that it had to be, his
sister from the first had resented it secretly and with
vindictiveness.
No one guessed that back of her highly-bred, small-featured primness
she was a conceited woman, that conceit was the woof of her nature.
Although she was gray, frail and small, wore heavily lensed
spectacles, and from leanness and rheumatism gave the impression of
having wooden joints under her austere clothing--all the notes of a
woman grown old and turned into a tolerant watcher of new types and
manners--she was in reality an entirely different being.
Miss Maury had been a mentor, a power of a sort among the various
collections of woman travellers among whom she had fallen during
fifteen years of unimaginative ambling over the world. As she read
much and talked with the pedant's labored clearness, she had been
counted very clever in these various sewing circles on the verandahs
of foreign _pensions_; she had a certain ironic wit, too, when warmed
by appreciation. Women of her own sort--elderly, detached--had
unbosomed themselves to her about large and small difficulties,
asking her advice as one augustly fitted to point the way. And she
had been used to responding in positive and concise phrases that
rounded out her ultimatum to the smallest detail. Her ruling was
generally accepted. When it was not, her glacial disapproval of the
offender could chill a houseful.
Elsie's pointless kindness to her and pointed separation from her had
quickly embittered her, until she had come to the apex of active
malice. This sister-in-law, just from what she was, young, popular,
admired by all their cordial and spontaneously hospitable Venezuelan
neighbors, and very lovely in a way that Miss Maury thought
spectacular--for blondes somehow conveyed the suggestion of
immorality to her--had made her feel her age in a way that was
disagreeable. She did not mind age when it meant power. She loathed
it when it made her a straggler after a procession that flashed past
her without heed or need of her.
Today, as she stood looking across the _patio_, she was full of
unfriendliness and exasperation. She was saying with savage flatness
what she had edged from heretofore,--that she did not like Elsie; did
not like her at all; did not understand her; did not trust her.
Although Miss Maury, with the squeamishness of the ineradicable
vestal, shrank always from consideration of sex in human
relations--in fact, had even dared to say that it was a pity the
Almighty could not have devised some spiritual miracle for race
continuance--she could not fail to see that her brother was not happy
as a husband; indeed was not a husband. Something very serious must
have happened to create this situation, and with clannish devotion
she felt sure the fault was not Robert's. It was puzzling, yet not
more so than were other things, small and large, noted by her
covertly vigilant eyes.
The most important of these was that Elsie left the house every
morning an hour before the midday meal to meet Domingo somewhere on
his ride back from the postoffice. She was always brighter
afterward, at breakfast, than at any other time. Still this could
not be due entirely to her receiving secret letters by lying in wait
for Domingo, for having at times questioned the man, Miss Maury had
learned that often when Elsie had returned especially refreshed,
there had been no mail at all for her, not even a post card.
The sense of a hidden thing was becoming intolerable. The young
woman was incomprehensible. There was something very wrong. And
with Robert's good in mind Miss Maury meant to discover what she
could about it. She had all the sanctimonious qualifications that
can twist baseness into right for a purpose, so that spying on her
part she would call duty, and the unmasking of another's weakness or
sin a triumph of her conscientiousness.
After remaining very still in the doorway for about five minutes she
went with a starchy rustle of her drab linen skirt to the top of the
house, to a room there used by Robert as a sort of laboratory, and
shut the door. The windows here looked over the red, fluted, dipped
roof toward the mountain road that Domingo must take on his return
from the town. Hung by a strap beside the sill there was a case
containing a pair of powerful field glasses. Miss Maury's eyes under
their reddened lids had a determined light in them as she pushed open
the shutters, adjusted the glasses to her sight, and stared steadily
out.
She slowly moved them from a straight direction to the right, up the
distant mountain a little, then down slowly and waveringly. At last
they came to a fixed pause. There was something remindful of a
vulture's claws about the veined old hands as they tightened on the
two leather cylinders and held them for a long time without a tremor.
Elsie had left the _hacienda_ shortly after ten. While in sight of
the house she had strolled as languidly as did any one of her new
Venezuelan friends on the rare occasions when they were induced to
walk more than a few yards. She carried an open book on her arm, and
under a white umbrella lined with apple-green that stained her
fairness with a sea shimmer, seemed easily to read, so slowly did she
pace.
At the turn of the hill one of the precipitous heights began, a part
of the _cordillera_ that in the far distance became the Sierra
Merida, soaring there into snow-capped peaks that sometimes seemed to
writhe in the tumultuous radiance drenching them. From this spot and
for almost a mile she was walled from the valley where her house
stood. And once within its shelter her look and manner changed.
She closed the book and went faster, her eyes steadily on the
perspective of the waving road. Having reached one rise, her gaze
swept the shallow curve downward and then up to the next hillock that
hid what lay beyond. She was never made really sure that this first
step of each day had been successfully taken until she would see
Domingo, a swaying speck, his legs hanging low over the side of his
burro, and coming toward her on a pattering canter.
Often, when he rode rapidly, she would meet him only a half mile from
the house. Something had delayed him to-day, for there was no sight
of him by the time she had reached a spot where the sheltering elbow
of the mountain swooped downward, and she was left facing an open
plateau from a road that ran like a shelf against the hill on her
other side. This overlooked several of the brightly colored houses
built on sixteenth-century Spanish models situated on the town's
outskirts and nestling in opposite coves of the mountains, her own
home among them. She felt, however, safe from observation in this
spot; it was so distant from the _hacienda_ that even if seen, she
would appear no more than a fly moving across a great statue's face.
The self-absorbed quiet, the absent gaze that were such constant
notes with Elsie were never present during the few times of each day
when she became this watcher in ambush. The high-stringed
uncertainty that kept her frail and shadowy-eyed would show as now: a
questing look in the eyes grown darker under the whitish-gold hair
blowing about her brow, her lips pressed so closely together their
rich curves were often lost.
Four months had gone since the August afternoon when Robert had
carried her away from the shabby hotel, where she had felt the
derelict's dull despair, to a new outlook in a flower-filled suite at
the Ritz, and then to this lovely land where easeful days were all
exactly alike. For a long time on each awakening, one thought had
leaped before her as a thing that had waited by her bed the night
through: Would the letter come that day?--And when?--Among the heavy
mail of the morning?--Or would it be one of the few that sometimes
straggled in before the afternoon _siesta_ and for which she would
manage to loiter in the entrance hall of the _casa_? Or would it
come at sunset? The fear always followed that something might
prevent her capturing it. Conquering this, she would then see
herself successfully closing her hand upon it, hiding it, and later,
in seclusion, without reading one of those bitterly regretted words,
destroying it with a throe of frantic joy. The whole had come to
have the excitement that is part of every game,--the craving to win.
Lately her suspense had lessened; every day the belief strengthened
that the letter she dreaded was lost conclusively. But she could not
trust the feeling. She had to keep watching. She had to be sure.
And this not because what she had was found satisfying. That she was
accepting Robert's hospitality under false conditions often made her
wretched. Often she felt herself a plain fraud, when her food would
seem to choke her, and wild impulses seize her to end their compact,
to go away and make the struggle for life in a clean independence.
The picture of the unaided fight along new paths would have a
vitalizing freshness that straightened her spine; even the thought of
frustrations on the way to success would take on a paradoxical
attractiveness just because of their living prod that would bring
every bit of her into glowingly desperate activity. Several times
she made up her mind to seek this liberty; once, when Robert was
absent for a full week at the mine, she made ready to leave.
One thing had always deflected her intention, melting her to the
miserable sorrow for Robert that she had felt from the first sight of
him in New York,--the dread that after she had gone, the letter with
its needless stabs would reach him, that he would know how far from
him she had gone on the night whose dark ending so often splashed up
in phantasmal horror upon the peace about her, would know that her
coming with him to Valencia had been on the support of a lie, would
believe the lie to have been merely a transient and sordid
accommodation for herself. A determination to keep this pain from
him would emerge through this tenderness and hold her in her place,
hoping for the arrival of the thing whose secret destruction could
alone set her free.
What sort of future awaited them she did not know. While Robert held
to their bond, savagely silent and neutral, she could feel that he
missed her as he would miss the sun. With her the past remained
dominant. Sometimes the craving for the dead was too heart-piercing,
pulled her into the pit of sadness for days. Again she would loathe
and resent the drugged sweetness of her useless life, its blessings
all negations,--absence of care and striving, and also absence of
love and all the delectable things that belong to it by which the
blood leaps and the heart sings. With wistful pangs she would
remember her real self, the passionate, lyric self unknown to Robert,
and that seemed to have sped away on that night of dying moonlight as
had Arturo's soul.
There was still another mood; this generally on sleepless nights.
She had never recovered from the shock of those hours when sensation
had been a cataclysm; it had left her nerves like loose wires that
leap easily in wrong directions and grow tangled; and when memory of
the several sorts of contempt she had experienced at Serafin's hands
would steal back to her through the dark, his sardonic smile a living
thing, she would moan feebly as if she were a wounded creature too
weak to move. It was then that by contrast she would clearly long to
love her husband--to love him really!--not as she had, with shy and
childish affection for what to a great extent was not understood.
And all this time, deeply in her, mixed with this confusion--she
wholly unconscious of it--was Nature's big instinct that cannot die
in the woman meant for motherhood; in whom it is dire need,
especially after she has borne a child. This was dulled
dissatisfaction in Elsie; had been there, dulled--while never ceasing
to strive toward inevitable fulfillment--under all her first feverish
pursuit of pleasure after deep grief, and her subsequent emotional
folly.
Domingo was coming. She sat down on a weather-stained stone seat,
built against the hill, and waited. The _mestizo's_ song reached her
first and then the swift, small beat of his burro's hoofs.
He was a good-looking, brown youth, sitting his animal with the gay
air of a boy on a hobbyhorse, his teeth a crescent of snow in a large
smile. From his hat of brown plush to the hempen-soled feet that
showed beneath ankle-short, nankeen trousers, he had become all
radiance at the sight of his mistress. This daily meeting with her
on the road pleased him, had the feel of a spurious sort of
adventure. Like Miss Maury he had gradually come to sense some
serious reason for it. By this time he believed it had to do with a
lover left behind in the States who adored the young _señora_
madly--as who would not?--and who perhaps was either imploring her to
come to him or threatening to arrive on the spot and slay her for her
refusal. Either of these things he felt might reasonably happen any
day, since his mistress must be unhappy. Ah, did he not know this
well? For was he not a lover of Candida who was the _señora's_
personal maid? And had she not told him that never once since the
Americans had come to live at El Iris had she seen the master enter
his wife's room,--while his own were even on the other side of the
house, with the whole _patio_ dividing them?
"_Buenas dias, señora_," came gaily from Domingo, as he rollicked up
the rise to her side.
"_Buenas dias_, Domingo. I might as well look at the letters here,"
said Elsie.
She varied her request to him each day, her tone always a careless
one. They spoke in two languages--Elsie haltingly in Spanish which
she had been studying for months and an English that Domingo used, a
curiously lacerated speech that he had picked up during his service
with German-Americans when they had built the railroad from Caracas
to Valencia.
"Three for you, _señora_," Domingo said, as he pulled open the linen
sack slung about his waist. "And one for Señorita Maury. There were
more, _señora_. But the señor himself stopped at the post-office
this morning early and took away his own."
Domingo felt that it must have been some trick of the sun through the
green lining of her umbrella that made his mistress's face seem
suddenly to change so oddly. She was always pale in a way he thought
angelic--and that no amount of the thick, native powder could impart
to his brown Candida--but now she looked as deathlike as her white
linen gown; and a question, after flashing up in her eyes for a
second, had gone out, leaving them dull, while they remained fixed
beyond him in the direction of the town.
"There must be a mistake," she said in a heavy way. The hand which
held her own letters had fastened so fiercely about them the knuckles
were stretched and glistening. "Señor Maury was not expected in from
the mine until to-morrow. Are you sure he was in the town--at the
post-office? What did they tell you there?"
"It was Placido Garcia that I saw, _señora_. He said that _Señor_
Maury was in a big motor car with another gentleman, that he had
taken his own letters and had gone away. I did not ask Placido more,
but felt sure that the señor had not gone home or he would have taken
all the others for the house," and Domingo ended with a flowing,
conclusive shrug.
"I see. It's all right," Elsie said, the tone seeming relieved.
"You can tell Señorita Maury to expect the señor for _almuerzo_. No
doubt he will arrive for that, after he has attended to some
business."
With a sweep of the brown plush hat Domingo pattered off and Elsie
was alone. She looked carelessly over the three letters, saw that
one was from a Fifth Avenue book shop, another from one of her few
girlhood friends married to an army man and living at a post in
Arizona, and the third, a heavy one, from her mother.
Nina's letters were always superficial. She ran no risk by writing
even one word in the most veiled way touching the hidden scar in her
daughter's life; never one to show that she knew of any jar or shadow
in the present association of Elsie and her husband. She also had a
way of enclosing newspaper clippings of fashions and plays, and
sometimes the details of a murder or divorce interesting New York.
After one glance which proved this letter no different from former
ones--a lot of chatter of incidental things that any one might safely
read--and that showed the bulkiness to be due to some columns cut
from a newspaper, Elsie, without reading either, folded them together
and replaced them in the big envelope. With the letters on her lap,
as she sat back bathed in the umbrella's green glitter, the chill
that had struck her with Domingo's news, and that had been held back,
seized her again. And again she looked toward Valencia.
This was the first time she had missed seeing all the mail ahead of
either Robert or Miss Maury. Her success up to the present moment
had been uncanny, for illness or too bad weather or some other
mischance might so easily have frustrated her vigilance. So to-day
she had her first taste of the peculiarly toothed suspense that never
comes from visible danger, but comes only from the shrouded and
suggested thing.
A mind picture that had a photographic clearness brought an odd
stillness about her heart: She saw her husband in Valencia's
post-office, in his hand the gray-blue letter sealed by Arturo's ring
which now hung in secrecy on a chain and close to her heart. At
first there was only surprise as he studied the evidence of its long
journey--soilure, its many addresses, the first postmark probably
from Bilbao in July, its Spanish stamp. He opened it with that
boyish eagerness that could so charmingly at the most unexpected
times sweep away his reserve. And with the reading she saw him frown
at first in startled pain; saw his eyes harden as, slowly, to the
strong face that could be so kind, a look of stunned and contemptuous
knowledge came,--the look that never would leave his secret thoughts
of her.
One of those convulsions that imagined disasters can give went
through her, ghostly things that move through one on a stabbing
breath. Her umbrella sank backward as her face turned to rest
against her arm and remained so for a moment until the surrender of
will to destiny brought its uninspiring peace. If this disclosure
had to come, it would come. Something outside of her and above her,
before which she was absolutely defenseless, would in the end decide
whether or not this shadow of her own act would turn some corner of
her life and face her with its relentless smile. The decision was
out of her hands.
She started up. As she turned to go home, the _hacienda_ was at its
plainest before her, and almost as if already she were a stranger,
having left it forever, she stood still and fixed a deep gaze on its
colorful beauty. Almost on the instant her look changed,--for the
house seemed balefully watching her. Yes, from a window that she
knew belonged to Robert's laboratory she saw two great eyes, a
greenish blaze in them as the sunlight caught them, and they were
fastened upon her. She could not imagine what they could be; could
only stare back at them. And as she stood so, with her lips parted,
they vanished.
The mystified look left her as she recalled the field glasses that
hung by that window. Once, through them, she had watched the
progress of the aeroplane that Robert's mining company had
experimented with for use over the most impassable parts of the
mountains. Then had Robert reached home? And had he watched her?
This was so unlike what he would be apt to do that she was left
uncertain, unnerved. Unless he had come into possession of her
secret! Ah, then he might watch her so, hating her perhaps? Nothing
else seemed to explain it.
A pulse was beating heavily in her head, her feet and hands were
cold. She summoned courage, and with the look of unrest that hovers
on wildness, went back along the road that led to the _hacienda_.
This might be the last time she would walk toward it. To-morrow
might see her leaving it--and Robert--forever.
Still--and the familiar suspense began its nibbling--the letter might
not have come to-day; perhaps she felt this sick fear without cause.
It was not being sure that was racking. Oh, horrible, horrible, this
never being sure!
CHAPTER XXIII
Candida was crossing the _patio_ as Domingo entered it. She was a
brown-gold _mestizo_, very young but large. The Spanish in her
showed in the diffused, warm grace with which she moved and in her
expressive hands, while her Indian heritage was plain in the coarse
strands of soot-like hair and her hawk's glance that only softened
when her heart was stirred, as when it rested in longing on Domingo.
Because these two were lovers Miss Maury frowned on any talk or
meetings between them during the working hours; it irritated her even
to catch, _en route_, the ardent glances they flung to each other
over her head. They seemed obedient automatons to her will, whereas
outwardly obsequious they were secretly impudent, and kissed all the
more when they could, because they hated her.
"The old cat is coming." Candida said this from the corner of her
motionless lips while carrying on her head, with a beautiful balance,
a tray bearing Elsie's sun-bleached and lacy underclothes. "Don't
say that the _señora_ did not meet you on the way, my beloved angel,
for I saw the old eagle with her accursed eyes glued to those glasses
in the _señor's_ upstairs room, and it is my belief that the devil's
old cat saw the _señora_ talking to you and did not like it. Her
mouth looks more than ever like the iron mousetrap in the kitchen."
"Little heart, in the very center of my big heart!" was Domingo's
answer in a thrilling whisper.
"Admired of my soul, my heaven of whom I dreamed last night!" Candida
replied with a bathing glance of the most overwhelming love as she
swayed on with her head burden to Elsie's big bedroom just as Miss
Maury stepped from the middle door.
"_Señorita_," said Domingo, his plush hat in one hand, as he extended
the single letter with the other.
Miss Maury, while giving a coldly comprehensive glance after Candida,
took it, and said acidly, "Nothing but this?"
"I met _Señora_ Maury and gave her--"
"All the others!" she interrupted with thin-toned emphasis.
"No, _señorita_, only her own. _Señor_ Maury already has his. He
was at the post-office this morning."
This interested and surprised Miss Maury so much she listened in
silence while Domingo explained fully.
"So _Señora_ Maury said the _señor_ would therefore be at home for
_almuerzo_, and I was to tell you."
"Send the cook to me here," Miss Maury snapped. "Put on your white
clothes," she added, as he began to move away, "and try to set the
table to-day without making your usual absurd mistakes. You can do
this if you keep your eyes and your thoughts on your work."
"_Si, señorita_," Domingo agreed with lamblike docility, turned his
back on her and pursued his way with his tongue stuck out stiffly in
humorous disdain of her and her authority, her ugliness,
flat-chestedness, and what was, to him, the tragedy of her fifty odd
years unsweetened by the love of a man.
Elsie entered shortly after. As she pulled off her white muslin sun
hat, Miss Maury was struck by the hard sort of quiet in her face,
like the hush before a storm breaks, and by something watchful in her
eyes as they moved slowly around the _patio_ to rest at last in a
waiting way on the steps that led up to the left gallery beyond which
was Robert's room.
"She looks--queer. She's had news to-day that's unsettled
her--that's sure!" Miss Maury was thinking, while with a fussiness
that was constitutional she rearranged unnecessarily every one of the
various objects on the table. "Do you think these long walks every
morning--_never missing one_--agree with you, Elsie? You look
exhausted," was what she said.
Elsie had heard this so often and was at the moment so engrossed with
her own suspense that without any intention of being rude, she
ignored it. "Have you seen Robert?" she asked, still looking aside
at the gallery that held his room.
"Where would I see him?" Miss Maury retorted, the resentment she
would have put into very different words had she dared going into the
question.
"He hasn't come!" A full breath of relief left Elsie, as with the
back of her hand she lifted the moist tangle of hair from her brows.
"The sun is so warm to-day--isn't it? Funny to think this is
February!" In a meaningless way, while her thoughts kept running
along the path of her anxiety, she drew the folded newspaper from her
mother's letter. "And there may be a blizzard blocking traffic in
New York!"
After an uncertain pause, and trailing the closed green-white
umbrella beside her, she crossed to her own room.
Miss Maury was about to call out in the over-polite voice of
criticism that she had forgotten her hat, signifying that the _patio_
was not the place for scattered wearing apparel, when she saw that
for all her opening of the letter, Elsie had also left it with the
folded paper on top of it. A thought came to Miss Maury as she noted
them. A thought; a plan. She waited. Her hand stole forward, its
crookedness from rheumatism giving it the look of rapacity that
belongs to talons, and pulled the embroidery so that it covered both.
Later, if they were completely forgotten--then--well--it would be
easy, with fair play to Robert in mind as part of her duty, and if
she could do so with safety--
She did not clearly finish even to herself, but her mouth was
tightened, and she felt strong in righteousness. She would have been
the most amazed of women if illumination had come to her that to a
detective her tactics would have been the familiar ones of a slick
shoplifter who first locates what she means to steal, retires,
returns, plays with her intention as a cat with a mouse until she
sees a secure moment for making off with her loot.
Twenty minutes later, after sitting on the further and sheltered side
of the table, her needle darting up and down, Miss Maury had managed
to accomplish her purpose, and knew what Elsie as yet did not--every
word of Nina's letter; every word of the account set forth in the
newspaper. For the former she had only contempt; its babble of
frivolous things was eloquent of the flighty little singer as she
remembered her at Robert's marriage. But the story told in print,
while it made nothing plain to her--for there was not a name in it
that she had ever heard before--created a picture of prodigality, sin
and doom that brought a ferment of possibilities and questions to her
mind.
Who was this Marqués de Burgos whose murder was so vividly described?
Had the mother, or daughter, or both of them known him in the
dissolute world of which the article spoke? If so, why had Nina
failed to write a word in her letter concerning his dreadful death?
Had she, perhaps, reasons--good reasons--for thinking it wisest to
place only the public announcement of it before her daughter? Or,
even more likely, had they known the woman who had been his
companion, and who had managed to slip without scandal from the
situation as one might escape at the last moment from the hangman's
noose? Was this creature, described as a blonde--and by this
convincingly meretricious to Miss Maury--one of their own soulless,
light-minded intimates?
At this last query a feeling tore through her that made her sit back,
breathless. Following it the malice in her freshened, a sense of
ascendancy warmed her pleasantly. The _blonde_ woman! The woman
whose fairness had, from the description, been conspicuous, like
Elsie's! _Suppose?_ ... The thought, when fully faced, was for a
moment overpowering, then seized her with more force. If indeed this
had been Elsie's self, how completely it explained all that was
mysterious about her,--her preoccupation, daily uneasiness, her
unfailing watchfulness of the mails in which she felt some news might
come to unmask her. Of course! And if it were true, how it made
visible the cause of her nervousness that very morning, for she must
be conscious that to one who knew details of her Paris life during
the past June--as did Robert, no doubt--exposure lurked in the
word-picture given of the woman who had played her disgraceful part
in this published tragedy.
It seemed almost too horrible to believe. She did not fully rest on
her suspicion. And yet--and yet--? As a sunbeam will dart about a
dark and littered corner, disclosing and then shutting off its
confusion, the thought danced before Miss Maury's excited eyes.
Sometimes it struck confusingly on her sight as if mocking her. Her
mouth only shut the more fixedly and she was as surely on its trail
as when with a folded wet towel she tracked a mosquito, to strike at
last, hard and successfully.
When Elsie entered her bedroom, Candida was there putting away the
fresh clothes. She did this with the impassioned sort of interest
that she gave to the care of all dainty and luxurious things. As she
worked, the gold hoops in her ears rocked to her supple swaying, her
tawny fingers, glossily mouse-colored on the under side, flickered to
their flexible tips with something of the adoration of a bee as it
circles in anticipation above a flower before darting down upon it.
"In some earlier existence I believe Candida was a pampered,
extravagant princess," Elsie had once said to Robert, "and of course
so very wicked that she's now being punished by this dark skin and
servitude. She makes a fetich of luxury--clothes and scent and
jewelry--and can't resist helping herself to whatever she fancies on
my toilet stand, taking small and steady nibbles the way a kitten's
paw keeps darting out to grab a spool. I've walked in upon her
several times when she's had lumps of my powder sticking to her nose
and fairly reeking with my 'illusion of lilies.' She almost fainted
at being caught. Poor Candida! Fancy being born with her mad thirst
for beauty and pleasure and condemned to the fate of a servant--a
_mestizo_!"
Elsie liked the girl sincerely and had her confidence. She would
advise her about her lover; tried to check her passion for the
lottery which, with other gambling, took a good part of her wages;
and gave her presents of some of her prettiest clothes when only
slightly worn. She did not know of the girl's detestation of Miss
Maury as nothing had heretofore come about by which she could let
down the shutters of her pretended respect. When to-day she was
asked a question that gave her a chance to inform her dear _señora_
of the older woman's dislike and suspicion, a glory came into her
dusky face.
"It was you, Candida, that I saw looking through the--the--" Elsie
had to illustrate the field glass. "--you know?--from the señor's
window upstairs?" With this she sat down in the room's central
shadow and clasped her hands.
Candida had the emptied tray under her arm. She poised her neck with
a touch of ophidian grace that lifted her lovely chin, and as a sign
of emphatic negation wagged the pliable index finger of her right
hand.
"Not I, _señora_. It was Señorita Maury. She searched the house for
you, and then she went upstairs. I even took off my _alpargatas_ so
that I could follow her without a sound. She opened the shutters and
stood up there a long time, looking through the glasses, and I knew
she was watching you over on the mountain road."
Elsie understood most of this rapid, exclamatory flow. _Selena_? A
new disquiet sent a chill over her flesh, much like the feeling one
has on slipping where one had anticipated dryness and safety.
"You speak very queerly, Candida. I do not like it. How did you
know that Señorita Maury was watching me?" Elsie asked, reproof in
the steady gaze she kept on the girl. "You must be mistaken."
"I knew it by the way she looked," she purred. "Oh, but it was
terrible--as if she had just taken a dose of quinine water. It is
the way she often looks at you, sweet _señora_, when you are not
thinking of her at all--"
"Candida!" broke from Elsie warningly.
"Ah, excuse--dear _señora_, please!--but it is the truth. I think
Señorita Maury does not like you because you are young, so
beautiful--not like her!" Candida continued softly but with
resolution. "She does not like anything that is sweet and nice--like
love and being young. So neither does she like me or Domingo, who
worship so much and wish to marry. And I? I do not like her. And
Domingo?--He, too, does not like her. Never, never! Not so much as
the nail on his little finger. _Nunca--nadissimo!_"
"Never speak so again of the _señorita_! You may go," Elsie said in
the low tone of one deeply disappointed and with a look of reproach.
"Si, _señora_," Candida made a suave gesture with her disengaged
hand, bowed gravely and walked in her waving way through the
jade-colored doors to the gallery.
Elsie remained sunk in thought, a slack, childish droop to her
figure. Knowledge of this antagonism, added to her speculation about
Robert, gave her the feeling of being at the mercy of an alien
element, close to the pull of an undertow. The grim things in the
past that had gone to the structure of the present moment moved
before her, while her hearing was a sentry alert for the sound of the
motor that would tell her Robert had come to quench or confirm her
dread.
It was so that Miss Maury, after leaving the _patio_, caught a
glimpse of her. Through the partially opened door that gave upon the
central hall there was just space for the picture Elsie made to show
as a gold and white patch in the middle dusk of the great room. And
it was so Miss Maury had seen her often, without being noted herself,
generally in the brief twilight when waiting for dinner,--motionless,
dreaming, with the look of one drugged and packed to the lips with
something of which she never spoke.
Robert did not appear for _almuerzo_ although it was delayed a half
hour in expectancy of his arrival.
The morning of fierce sunlight, unseasonably hot for February, with
one of the rapid changes of weather usual to the place, had become
still hotter, but with the sun gone and replaced by a sulphur-green
gloom that blanched everything under it. Accompanying this the dry
wind called _catias_ gained in force. A whining cry at first, this
became a snarl, then deep-toned lament and all to an accompaniment of
solid gusts that beat on the house until it seemed to be a drum
resounding to unearthly blows.
Elsie had experienced the _catias_ a few times before and always with
a sense of sadness and bodily weariness. It never failed to recall
the appalling sounds of the mountain hurricane at El Miradero that
had mixed with her first guilt and terror as the ecstacy of love for
Arturo had overwhelmed her. There was the added depression to-day of
having to eat her breakfast indoors and alone with Miss Maury. She
felt a distaste for food and forced herself to swallow some of the
_sancoche de gallina_--a rich stew of chicken and herbs--since the
business of eating helped to lighten the almost steady silence that
hung between them. When at last she could rise she had to hide a
dejected yawn.
For a moment she lingered at the window to look out at the _patio_,
emptied of its furnishings and full of an uncanny, quick-silvered
glitter. "Isn't that a dreadful sky?" she murmured heavily.
"Tragic--tormented--the sort of sky that must have been over Calvary!"
Miss Maury gave her a frowning stare. "You are so fond of using
sensational expressions," she said with thin-lipped distinctness.
"Was it fashionable--in Paris--to be flippant about sacred things?"
"I'm not in the least flippant!"
Elsie swung about, meaning to try amiably to win the woman to better
understanding of her, when before Miss Maury's woodenness, fixedness
and narrowness from heel to head the task towered up as hopeless.
"As the lightning's beginning I'll take my _siesta_ in the library.
I can darken that better than any of the rooms on the galleries. I
hope Robert will wait somewhere until the wind dies down, but if he
should come, Selena, will you please call me?" And she went out, a
reckless sort of hopelessness mixing all through her with a feeling
of lethargy.
Her hand was on the banister to mount to the library when she changed
her mind and stopped before a crêpe-curtained corner that held a
divan; it was a little place, much like a Pullman sleeper. To lie
down in this nook in the heart of the house, with no window at all
from which the lightning might be seen, was an impulse to be obeyed.
With relief she slipped behind the curtains, pulled them together and
settled herself on the couch in the luxuriously coiled way natural to
women and cats. Almost at once she sank into a daytime sleep that
from the oppression of the storm had the weight of a narcotic.
This seemed not to have lasted more than a few moments when she found
herself gazing with bewilderment up through the shadowy space at the
metal rings that held the curtains and was conscious of listening.
Unless she had just come out of a dream that still held, she had
heard Robert say her name in an angry, ringing, and surprised way.
She felt herself whiten as she started to her elbow, her muscles
hard. No dream? He had spoken. She was hearing him again.
"_Elsie?_" This with compressed and enraged unbelief. "You are
saying these things of her--to me? Selena!--" A cup rattled on a
saucer, a chair rasped the terra-cotta floor.
"Don't look at me like that, Robert. Give me a chance to explain.
You've always been so headstrong and so ready to misjudge me!
Yes--there are a few things I've noticed that I think you ought to
know about and for your own good--"
"My good!" he mocked furiously. "That's the sort of ointment you've
put on every disagreeable act of yours as far back as my childhood,
Selena. Leave my _good_ out of the question. I'll attend to it."
The conclusion had a stormy serenity.
"But when I've seen Elsie wildly anxious about the letters--"
"I tell you--"
"When," Selena rasped on in venom now desperate, "from the most
casual watching of her I can see--"
There was the sound of the chair being flung across the flooring.
"And who told you to watch?" Robert demanded in fury. "Damn all
this! Selena--are you crazy?"
"You'll kindly not curse," Selena breathed in a tone of trembling
wrath. "That's something new for you!"
"Sorry. But you drive me frantic. I come home and you begin by
insinuating that you believe my wife is hoping for and watching for
letters from some man that I'm not to know about--that she lives in a
dream with thoughts that worry her, and that you've been spying on
her. One would think you the mistress of this house and she here to
fall in with your ideas and your rules. I can see, too, from your
face and manner and from every word you've said that you don't like
Elsie. No, you don't like my wife! This is a shock to me. I knew
when I asked you here that your views were different from hers, but I
supposed that life and age had softened you, made you more tolerant
than you used to be. I was wrong. Now I know I've been unjust to
Elsie--most unjust--leaving her here alone with you, as I have, even
though it was necessary. She must see how you feel toward her--she
can't help knowing it--although, unlike you, she's carried no tales,
has never said a word about it. Yes, she must be unhappy. My God,
Selena, you want to wake up! Things are going to be different here
from to-day on!"
There was a heavy silence. Elsie could hear her heart like a
resounding something flung back and forth on the push of her uneven
breath. Relief was a brightness through her, knowing from Robert's
words that he had not received the letter that morning. And with
this, pulses of tenderness seemed to have come to life and be
quivering all over her body because he was defending her. How his
flawless, ardent truth burned away the secret fungus of Selena's
rancor! For he was true! Yes, that was his code--and how unlike
what her own had become!--to be honest, to be fearless, so that the
most difficult, the darkest thing he faced could not help but be
conquered.
Her satisfaction vanished like a wisp of smoke, and apprehension
spread through her with Selena's next composed yet stolidly resentful
words:
"Well, at any rate--read this. You may know the man it's about and
understand it--all of it!"
"What is it?" Robert asked curtly.
"Take it. It's from a New York newspaper and came to Elsie this
morning in a letter from her mother."
"How do you know all this?"
"Elsie forgot it--left it on the table in the _patio_. When the wind
began and I carried in the things from the table, I glanced at it,
hoping it was some news of the war."
"And when you found it wasn't--you read it just the same."
"There seemed no harm in reading what was in a newspaper! Afterward
I felt it might be important for you to know about it as well as
Elsie. Take it."
"I don't want it." There was a rustling as of a paper being flung
down. "If Elsie had wished you to read it she'd have given it to
you. Put it with her letter in her bedroom."
"But Robert--"
"Do it now, please."
"You are determined--?"
"Do it now."
Elsie heard the froufrou of Selena's stiff linen skirt; then Robert's
pacing step on the stone pavement; the crackle of a match as he
paused, and his steps again; soon the returning rustle of Selena.
There was silence for a full minute.
"Listen to me," she heard Robert say with the deadly quiet that she
knew meant his most intense mood. "This criticism of Elsie, this
attempt of yours to accuse her to me of something vague, yet
damaging, has astounded me. She's not the sort of woman you dare to
hint at her being. Not that sort--and I know it!" After this, for a
full moment there was perfect stillness. Then, "I must think this
over, Selena. One thing I will say now, and bear it in mind--never
make a movement in regard to Elsie again except what you do openly.
Anything else, no matter how you decorate the act to yourself is as
mean as--theft!"
Elsie heard his steps retreat toward the side of the house that held
his bedroom. She heard Selena open the doors into the _patio_ so
that a rush of scented air blew in and bulged the curtains about her
hiding place. She waited until the silence was perfect before she
stepped out.
CHAPTER XXIV
In her bedroom, with the door into the hall locked and the big double
doors of green that gave on the gallery bolted, Elsie had read the
news in the square of paper sent by her mother. She had read every
word slowly, some of the paragraphs again and again. And this
finished, she was standing with the thing twisted into a coil in her
hands. Life seemed to have gone out of her except for a nightmare
look.
The extract belonged to a weekly paper where a writer who knew his
Debrett, Burke's Peerage and Almanach de Gotha backward, wrote
intimately of happenings present and past among the various noble
families of all the European countries. In this he gave a belated
account and a true one of how the young Marqués de Burgos had met his
death the June previous at his Cantabrian lodge.
After introducing him in the purple of his family honors, he had
dwelt on his social prestige in Paris, his almost unbelievable good
looks, his poverty that he wore as a grace because of the fanatical
exclusiveness that kept him from marrying outside of his class for
money. Don Arturo's facile idea of honor in gallantry was described:
"... much like that of the young sparks of sixteenth-century England,
as shown in Wycherley's and Congreve's comedies, when expert
libertinage was a fashionable profession. He was just as charming in
manner as these popinjay rakes, as light-minded, extravagant,
generous, soulless, and as serenely cruel. Like them he had stalked
whatever woman or girl aroused desire. If, innocent, she resisted,
and was captured by some trick, she was used for his pleasure,
lightly discarded, instantly forgotten."
Sparkling cynicisms miniaturized the Paphian uses to which Don Arturo
had so often put El Miradero in its mountain isolation,--how women of
fashion, one and then another, had vanished from their known places
to be queens there, secretly and briefly, with him; and how peasant
girls, also one after another, had entered it, casual loves, who, too
late, found that hope had been left behind. It was for the last of
these rustic victims that the Marqués de Burgos had been made to pay
the supreme penalty.
Her name was Ascuncion Sanchez; her father, a respected and very
religious man, a fisherman at Lequeytio. Of conspicuous beauty, with
deep, soft-gazing eyes and a smile to melt the heart, Ascuncion had
come to sixteen years and to the devotion of the lads of the
red-roofed, little Basque town upon the Bay of Biscay. She was in
the first enjoyment of her power as a woman desired, walking among
her simple-hearted suitors while looking over and beyond them--a
child playing the queen--when Don Arturo passed her way.
And as Francesca, surrendering to love for Paola, closed a book and
"read no more that day", so Ascuncion, for Arturo, had closed the
book of innocence. The child became a woman with a flaming heart,
all her artless, affected imperiousness replaced by a real, a tragic
worship. Willingly humble, she had asked but to be somehow,
somewhere, a hidden possession in Don Arturo's life, content with
what morsels of it he could give her, if only his love would endure.
Her happiness had been of the briefest, lasting hardly two months of
that summer of nineteen hundred and thirteen, when--keeping away from
El Miradero to which they would have been tracked--they had hidden in
small inns in out-of-the-way Spanish towns. After it, Ascuncion, on
the way to motherhood and almost insane from grief, had gone back to
her father's home.
The writer felt sure that through the following pleasure-packed
autumn and winter in Paris, De Burgos had not given a thought to this
girl of the people with her doe's eyes and sweetly-syllabled name;
yet when in, June of the following year she and her infant had died,
it was decreed under the roof of that Basque fisherman that his life
was to pay for hers. From that moment he had not had a chance of
escape.
Her father had found him at El Miradero. This was on a certain night
late in June, when his anguish for his daughter's destruction was at
its freshest,--had, moreover, found him there, light-hearted, with a
new mistress, this time a young, strikingly blonde woman to whom De
Burgos had spoken in what the fisherman had felt sure was English,--a
language whose sibilations had grown familiar from the tourist
sportsmen who came often to Lequeytio for hake fishing and whose
boats he had managed. This beauty, in the glittering semi-nudity he
described, he had felt to be as sophistically wanton as the man he
had come to call to an accounting,--the sort of _bacchante_ with whom
the aristocrat should always rightfully have been content, leaving
the virtuous daughters of the poor to their prayers and to the love
of their own men who made wives of them. In her presence he had shot
the notable and notorious young Marqués de Burgos. Yes--this
grandee, possessing the sacred blue blood he had from childhood been
taught to honor, he had killed with the implacable precision with
which he would have despatched a mad dog.
The story in conclusion told how for months the truth of Don Arturo's
death had been smothered in the servants' statements that it had
resulted from an encounter with a thief. They were the only
witnesses, as "the soiled butterfly who had been the young man's
companion had used her tinsel wings to good effect and vanished--in
all likelihood, to Paris. The query: 'Who was she?' remains
unanswered."
An accident to Ascuncion's father at Christmas time in the big
seaport town to which he had gone with his family, while his
neighbors had supposed him in America, had brought out the facts.
The man was injured beyond the possibility of living, and his wife,
who regarded this tragedy as an expression of divine wrath for his
crime, beseeched him to confess. He had done so to a priest, and
publicly to a lawyer, saying in a blaze before he died that he spoke
not only to clean his soul, but as he no longer had fear of the law,
to stain the name of the seducer,--a great name in Spain. Since its
owner had secretly used it for vileness, why should he keep it clean?
This was what Elsie had read; what Miss Maury had read; what Robert
might so easily have read--Robert, who knew she was at El Miradero on
that date in June, given so exactly. Her eyes had gone ahead of the
reading, raking the lines in dread of seeing her own name start out
at her. When she realized that she had escaped this, her heart still
rang through her clammy body with the strokes of a working hammer.
Shudders ran over her. The disillusionment on which Nina in sending
her this revelation had shrewdly counted was as real as a
thunderbolt. It crashed through her spirit, splitting her beliefs,
turning memory from a thing that had sincerity and some tragic beauty
into the altogether vile.
She crept into an armchair, the paper still twisted in her hands.
Her thoughts went back to the summer of nineteen hundred and
thirteen. During months previous to it Arturo had told her of his
absorbing love,--for he had not juggled with time, had made this
flagrantly manifest soon after their meeting, in the early spring.
In that July, bitter in despair, he had left Paris for his mountain
solitude. When autumn came he had returned from it to keep at her
side again, as fierce in his prayers, seemingly as driven by
disappointment, as he had been from the beginning.
And now she was informed of how he had spent those months in Spain,
to what work he had been committed: The defilement of innocence and
artless trust for a sense gratification; the wrecking of a girl's
life at its fresh beginning, with her death and the heartbreak of
those who had loved her following on her disgrace. This treachery,
often so commonplace in light-living and palliating society that the
horror of its true outlines was obscured, she, through feeling, saw
clearly,--the cynical self-complacency, the deliberate and mean
deceit, the animalism and rooted brutality that alone could make
possible this loathsome crime.
Wan, Dantesque figures hurtled through memory as she sat so: Arturo,
the fisherman, Serafin, herself, and the sorrowful girl whom she had
never seen. With these the word "Ascuncion" began to beat on her
mind. She had noticed how often the ghastly-faced stranger had
uttered it, either flinging it at Arturo in rage or lingering over it
tenderly, and in her ignorance of Spanish then she had not recognized
it as a woman's name. Yes, this story of Ascuncion was true. Here
was the solution of Arturo's murder. The vengeance that can become
the very root of insensate grief had judged him abominable, unfit to
live.
By degrees this closeness to the past sank away. As Elsie still sat
motionless, she found herself prefiguring what would have awaited her
had Arturo lived. She saw the first flare of their life together
over--and what was left? What had become of the exultant defiance of
the world's opinion, his homage, their consuming happiness, the
sweet, only half-guessed, violent joys? They were gone. And Arturo
was before her, almost with the look of a stranger. He was as suave,
and elegant, and graceful as ever, but the liquidly brilliant eyes,
so often imploring and melancholy, had a still indifference that
shook her heart. He spoke, and his smooth tones had an ultimate
deadness. He was changed, he said. Things would happen so. Who
could know one's self surely? She must be sensible. He was changed.
And the idyl was over.
The unreasoning misery of women at seeing the glamour depart from
what has been intensely precious mixed in her with a feeling of
degradation and rage. Against this thing of utter cheapness, this
rank thing, she had staked every good in life, even reputation. Her
hands went up and spread over her face, covering its distress from
the daylight as they had on that morning in the mule coach after the
cynical disrespect that is so often the light woman's portion had
beaten down her head, given wormwood to her taste. That pain was
with her again. Again the shame soiled her.
A little while and she roused herself; something bright began to show
in her spent eyes, strengthened into a grave, fixed, gaze. It was a
look of purpose. As before she had flung herself without reckoning
to disaster for the wrong thing, so now by every possible strategy
she would work to save herself from any bitter aftermath attending
her weakness and mistake,--now, as never before, since dignity had
been stripped from it and thought of it had passed into the
intolerable.
CHAPTER XXV
An hour later the hot wind, that wailed and pounded, had ceased as
suddenly as it began. The servants replaced chairs and rugs in the
_patio_ for its usual occupation up to sunset. The air was delicious
now, soft as sunned milk, with tingling chills through it whose
source was the snow-crowned mountains miles away.
Elsie was almost dressed when she saw Robert come down the steps from
his gallery, lay a heap of papers and account books on the table, and
stretch himself in a lounging chair beside it. The striped umbrella
had been taken away, and the lemon glitter of late afternoon poured
over the red roofs that made a square around the patio, turned the
fountain's spray behind him to sparks, and struck a flash from the
silver in the close ripples of his hair.
From within the shelter of her room as he lay in this full light,
Elsie studied him. More gray edged the black locks about his brow
than had been there even a few months ago. She saw, too, that while
no doubt he had bathed and rested, and had changed into the white
linen that he wore at dinner, it was more than likely he had not
slept. His eyes had a wakeful brightness and the bluish stains of
fatigue. He did not look at the papers, although he lifted some of
them for examination; after fingering them he put them back and began
to pack his pipe with tobacco; as suddenly he paused, left it
unlighted and fell into thought; the lids were lowered under frowning
brows, the whole face had a look of sadness.
Elsie had designedly put on a gown he had told her he liked. It was
of black chiffon, cut away at the throat in a round, babyish fashion,
the skirt a mass of minute ruffles that kept up a fluttering as of
breeze-stirred leaves. In this she was a moving shadow, the
pearliness of her arms and tender bosom gleaming through its
sheerness, her pastel-tinted face and nimbus of hair a radiance above
it. The grievous memories just endured had worn her eyes into a look
of intensified spirituality; with this the determination to hold
tenaciously to good repute had tilted back her head, put an unusual
streak of pink into her cheeks, the dawn of a smile upon her hardily
lifted lip. It was so that she stepped out on the gallery.
Robert rose quickly. As he watched her approach, a hush stole over
the welcome of his look. Her quickened beauty was like revelation.
He had never felt it so keenly nor the distance between them so
cruel. As his breath grew troubled, the surface of his body seemed
brushed by fire.
Elsie had almost reached him when the nervousness she was fighting
made her step unsteady, and she stumbled over the end of the rug.
Robert seized her by the arms in a gentle, perfectly balanced grip
that told of his strength. But when, because of the gauze, he seemed
clasping her cool, bare flesh, she felt the sudden betraying tremble
of his muscles. He held her so for a few seconds, only long enough
to steady her, while his self-control faltered like a flag about to
fall, his look into her eyes an aching cry.
Revulsion came as quickly. A flush, a frown of light self-scorn
passed over his face, leaving it stern. "Sit down, my dear," he
said, and helped her into the long chair. "I missed you. Did you
sleep?"
"For a whole hour, I'm sure. You see I hid away from the storm."
There was a break in her voice. The knowledge of his unrest and
longing had brought it; while this gave assurance of her
undiminished, even increased power over him, it was a troubling
thing. "I feel the most gruesome heaviness and sadness from those
hot winds. You didn't sleep though--did you? You look so very
tired," she said, and clasping her hands, met his interested eyes
with the faint, poised smile of a child who waits for a story to
start.
"I am tired."
"Can't you give up work at all? Take a little rest?"
"I've come in now to stay two days. Business is held up until I get
certain instructions from New York."
She sat back as if half-dreaming. There was a pause. She had a rõle
to play and must not suddenly be markedly unlike the self-communing
woman with whom Robert had grown familiar. After a silence that
pulled between them--with none of the charm that silences can have
between two where there is contentment--she spoke again.
"Tell me something about what you do at the mines. You're a
wonderful bronze from the sun."
"Not only sun--frost."
"Is it so cold?"
"Often it's bitter. During September and October, when it rained, it
was a curse--nothing less. The mountain winds through the wet were
bone-piercing then. The mules had a bad time. All the roads were a
soft mat, and where there was grass it was like progress over soaked
sponges. It's better now. Still we all--Americans and natives--at
times have to wear knitted wool masks with holes for nose, eyes and
mouth. God only knows what I'd have become by this time except for
my wool mask!"
Now he lighted the filled pipe and, stretching out in his chair close
to hers, began to smoke with enjoyment. He seldom looked at her and
in the barest side glances. She noticed this, while feeling that the
most acute consciousness of her was in those averted eyes.
By a few questions she led him to talk again of his work and heard of
delays and disappointments that she understood only in a sketchy way.
"I've told you that this Logrono mine is an old one, first exploited
six years ago and abandoned as hopeless. When my people with their
wealth decided, from information that seemed sound, to take it over
and begin operations, they felt sure they were on the trail of a
bonanza. So did I. I still have faith but not in such results as
those on which we counted. Besides all the mess I had to struggle
through in starting, another angle is always jutting from the
situation, a complication that arises from mining property adjoining
ours and that was, in fact, originally part of the whole Logrono
mine. This, you see--" He broke off sharply, to brood down at the
stem of his pipe before saying with a drily apologetic look at her:
"I'm boring you. This stuff doesn't interest you, perhaps isn't even
intelligible to you."
"I'm not so stupid!" She smiled slightly, the tone a rallying one.
"Try a simplified version. I'll like hearing of something new and
that's so important to you."
"Well, briefly--I'm puzzled as to what attitude I ought to take
regarding a proposition that's impending from the native owners of
the other half of the Logrono mine. They have neither the money nor
the outfit for opening up again, although they contend that they know
that in their property lies the richest vein of the mountain.
Lately, a Venezuelan named Olazaba, a shrewd, very convincing sort of
a man and who speaks English almost as well as I do, has spent a good
deal of time with me. He's representing the others, though as yet
only in a tentative sort of way--putting out feelers that I can see
point toward amalgamation. Of course, this would mean a big position
for him with his backers. Also he may own a big block of the now
worthless stock that in the event of the other half being operated
with ours would at once become valuable, so that his real interest
may be a purely selfish one in entangling us to his own profit. Do
you understand?"
"I think so. You mean that whether the other property were good or
not, this man and the others behind him would benefit by association
with you."
"Exactly. I'm not inclined to consider the thing at all, for my own
belief is that we have the rich half of the mine. And yet--as in all
speculations--holding to this idea, I may be turning my back on
fortune. Olazaba was on the ground years ago during the earlier
operations, and he has a set of arguments that on the surface seem
very worth while. I don't know--" He left the rest unsaid and began
to smoke thoughtfully.
"I'm ignorant of it all, of course, but I'm sure a woman in such a
situation would trust to intuition," Elsie counselled with a serious
air. "Opening an old mine!" Her voice grew dreamy as she said this.
"I like the picture of that better. Gigantic!--Is it romantic, too?"
"As a picture I've no doubt it's very romantic. As a business, it's
been an unholy thing to struggle through! The old dump and buildings
and rusted machinery had to be inspected and inventoried; the
workings underground that had filled with water had to be drained off
before there could be any new drilling to ascertain where the old
lead led and the dip of the veins beyond the place where the earlier
work had stopped. Some additional property had to be gained and new
mineral rights secured. I've arranged a detailed report recommending
the installation of still better machinery. All this takes time. I
thought when I came here," he added with a touch of despondence as he
gazed ahead, puffing softly on the short pipe gripped by his browned
hand, "that I'd get big results in about two months--and I'm still
anxious. You've no idea of the obstacles and dangers attending the
reopening of an old mine like this. To start with, its chambers were
full of snakes and bats and a crawling mass of the _arana mono_--a
spider six inches long whose bite causes the most dreadful fever.
Timbering caved in. Then, just as we got really going--and from
something that looks like the work of enemies--our windlass cable
broke. No idle dream, I assure you!"
Elsie bent forward to look into his face, her own rapt and attentive.
"I'd no idea you had such a frightfully hard time, Robert. Why
didn't you tell me something about it before? You've never said a
word!"
His gaze, turning fully upon her, took a most charming turn; it was
quizzical, with a touch of the fondness with which one regards an
engaging child, and with the faintest shadow of reproach. "You never
asked me," he said very simply.
The words silenced Elsie, brought a pang of regret for his
loneliness. It was all the sharper as it came with freshened memory
of his defense of her that day.
As if he caught this last thought, he bent nearer as she sank back.
"Tell me something," he said in the earnest tone that invites
confidence. "Be frank with me, Elsie. Are you--?" He hesitated,
trouble in his eyes. "Are you unhappy here?"
She forced her face to one of its old, sudden sparkles. "Have I
seemed so?--a sort of Mrs. Gummidge? Dreadful! Why, of course,
Robert, I haven't been unhappy!"
"Well, are you contented?" As she did not speak he went on, visibly
more anxious at her silence. "Does nothing irritate you? I mean, is
there any single thing you'd have changed? You have only to tell
me," he said, his straight gaze and tranquil force a seal upon the
words.
"I like it all." This was muted, slow, deeply sincere. And then
words she had not intended to speak, did not want to speak, burst
from her uncontrollably. "You are too kind to me. Oh, from the
first--from that day in New York, you have been kind. I feel horrid
to have you so good to me!" The tone, while continuing subdued, had
grown frantic, and tears broke from her in a sudden storm. All the
mixed pain of the day was in the collapse. Though she fought it, her
lips went awry as her head sank further back, and she turned away her
face. "I've been cruel--oh, I know it, although you've never let me
see it. Cruel and selfish--that's what I've been! I couldn't help
it--but it's true."
Without moving an inch toward her or touching her, Robert let the
weakness expend itself. His eyes, startled and anxious at first,
grew comprehending and kindled angrily.
"Elsie!" He said this almost in a whisper, with decision, as her
composure returned, and waited until she looked at him in an
unwilling, clouded way. "I don't intend to answer what you say of my
kindness to you. That's not a word, with its charity and patronage,
to be used between us--absurd! I know now, however, that what I
feared is true. Selena chills you, tries you, has made you nervous--"
"No, no--"
"Now you are kind--to her. You are hiding the truth."
"No!" She bent forward vigorously. "Please don't say any more about
it. For you are wrong. If I were not contented here, no one would
be to blame for it but my own self."
A longing came to her to bathe her spirit in truth--as much of it as
she dared speak--and with this a look of recklessness brought
intensity to her face.
"I ought not to have come here. It isn't fair to you. You asked
me--I didn't want to--I know it isn't fair."
"It is quite fair."
"No! I ought to go. Suppose I tell you now that I cannot stay?"
He remained silent, not looking at her. "Then you would go. I'd
have to let you, and without a word to try to keep you," he said in a
quiet voice that had no likeness to peace. "I asked for your
companionship, hoping that while we lived under the one roof you
might come to know yourself better than you did in New York. You
told me then that your love for me was gone. You didn't say you
cared for some one else; and you don't say it now."
He stopped. He was waiting, she knew, for her answer in words to
make his conviction absolute. She could not bring herself to speak.
It was even hard, with her mouth set in a look of repudiation, to
move her head slightly in the negative, the while she saw a grave in
Spain that could not be remembered any more except with the dark
sense of insult.
"That's what I believed. If it had been otherwise, you'd have told
me. And so I hoped--I couldn't help it. I couldn't believe, Elsie,
that things were at such a pass between us as never to be righted
again." After a silence some wistful words came, as if defying his
will. "I promised to be grateful for your dear companionship here on
the basis of friendship. And I am! Still forgive me if, just once,
I speak of what I feel beneath this."
He leant his arm well over on the table and bent closer to look in
the face that was so still.
"You tell me that no one has taken my place in your heart. I am true
to you. And I have been, often through temptation that might have
explained my failing--savagely, tenaciously true to you--because from
the beginning I have loved you with my soul. For I am the sort of
man who makes a temple about what is in his soul. And who would soil
a temple?"
This declaration went through Elsie and seemed to turn her heart
over. Her strained eyes, grown very dark, met his look fully, bathed
in it, until her lids fluttered down, leaving the face as a lovely
mask.
"I knew you loved me that way." This was only a breath and over lips
so quiet they seemed chiselled. "I always knew it. You would put me
away, often, Robert, in a lonely niche and high up on a pedestal
where it could be very cold," she said, a flicker of irony in the
faint smile that showed and faded in her face, "but I knew your
feeling for me had holiness in it. I confess I did not value that as
it deserved." What followed came slowly, an odd, bitter fervor in
it. "_I value it now._"
The four intense words brought Robert elusive trouble. There was no
encouragement in them that his flawless love, though prized, had
drawn her nearer to him. He fought depression.
"Stay on here a while longer," he urged. "Our marriage is like a
house that has partly fallen, but with the foundation sound--since we
have kept the faith! Don't say you must go--not yet!"
Candida, trundling the tea wagon, came from the house, followed by
Miss Maury. The equipage with its appetizing array was rolled before
Elsie.
"I hope you want your tea, Selena, as badly as I do at this moment,"
she roused herself to say as she began to serve it.
"Yes," was the answer, and no more.
Robert gave his sister a long, studying look. There was an ugly
light in her eyes, a faintly greenish tinge through her skin as of a
liver actively disturbed, her air of exaggerated resignation really
indicating the most contradictory hostility. He became very
thoughtful as he took his cup from Elsie.
And she, while her fingers, veiled at times by the floating gauze of
the long sleeves, moved prettily among the china and silver, called
back her determination to fight any danger that threatened exposure.
Selena was such a danger; and without displacing her or injuring her
with her brother, Elsie meant, amiably, to defeat her.
"I had a letter from my mother this morning," she casually announced.
Robert did not conceal his pleasure at these words. It was in his
look as he deliberately let it fence with Selena's for a second.
"What does she say about New York--how it's taking the war?" he
asked. "The papers I've seen show that while the government may
declare itself neutral until it's black in the face, the people go
out of their way to howl their rampant detestation of everything
German--and for that at least, God be praised!"
Elsie forced a sound of laughter. "Muv doesn't mention the war,
except to describe Percy's latest hat inspiration born of
it--something shaped like an aeroplane with big wings on each side.
Her other news was like that--her usual prattle."
Much as a desperate creature pushes its way through darkness and cold
to some refuge, she made ready to utter once what it was ignominy
even to hold in her thought. And while making this bitter struggle
she seemed a human lily, something that uglinesses like sin, deceit
and guilty fear could never soil.
"She sent me a horrid bit of news, though--an account of how a man
we'd both known in Paris was killed. He had seduced a young country
girl and her father shot him." Then, while it seemed beyond belief
that it was she who spoke the next words, they came with apparent
serenity through lips that felt frozen: "Evidently a thoroughly bad
lot, although he had not seemed that sort."
Her spirit quailed at thought of having to speak Arturo's name.
Surely he would be recalled to Robert as the man to whose house she
had gone after their parting in Paris. Yet that she could escape
this seemed hopeless. Robert was waiting for her next words; she
could feel that to ask who the man was hesitated upon his lips.
Breaking this premonitory silence, there came the sound of a light
tread on the pavement at their back that seemed to Elsie nothing less
than Godsent. To emphasize it as an interruption and divert interest
from herself, she gave a quick look over her shoulder. When she saw
Domingo, the mail bag in his hand, going toward her husband, she
seemed to go blind just as she sat, with her head turned.
In the excitement of the past few hours she had forgotten the evening
post and her usual method of inspecting it first, as though by
accident, in the entrance hall. There was nothing she could do but
drag back her dulled eyes to rest on Robert and watch him as a
prisoner does the jury. Would he draw from the bag a gray-blue
letter--a worn and scrawled letter--a letter with a seal? On the
long, rigid look she did not breathe....
It was through a lurch of vertigo that she saw she was safe. A few
large white envelopes, visibly business communications and circulars
from places near by, were all that came out. She made herself
perfectly motionless as with all her strength she fought the
weakness, glad that Robert's eyes were lowered as he read. When the
_patio_ steadied, she relaxed heavily in the chair, peaceful again,
though every bit of her was deadly cold.
One look at Miss Maury, and she knew she had not escaped completely.
What she read in those eyes, fixed upon her in a quietly immovable
way, sent the blood in a rush over her face, up into the roots of her
hair.
"You can deceive him," she felt the look say. "He's a man, and in
love with you--therefore a fool. You can't deceive _me_."
That night the Venezuelan neighbors came to the _hacienda_ to play
bridge. The tables were made up, and as there were just enough
without Elsie she truthfully said that she was glad to be left out,
as she wanted to stay in the air. A Spanish lace shawl that Robert
had brought her from Caracas wrapped about her head and shoulders,
she strolled through the front doors that gave upon the road.
The light from an almost full moon was a drenching pallor on which
every smallest leaf was moving jet. Just such a night and such a
light as were about her when she had stood above the Cantabrian
precipice; and--though farther away--mountains were here, their
shining heights rounding out the memory. The scene seemed, in a way,
a ghost of that other one. And she, too, with her sickened heart,
only a ghost of the woman who had lived on life's most thrilling note
that night.
After pacing for a few moments on the path before the door, she
crossed quickly to a wood of packed pines that made shadow on the
other side. She had never gone even this short distance from the
house alone at night, and to step into the darkness of the trees
required daring. When, in the silence, stirrings from the bushes and
the scampering of tiny frightened feet about her own made her know
she had trespassed on the night freedom of the furtive life hidden
there, a shudder of repugnance went over her but without bringing her
to a pause until she stood beside what she sought. This was a
deep-channeled and pebbly stream flowing on such a sharp slant that
its rush over a slope made the chatter of small waves. Divisions in
the trees let in the moonlight, and where the water was almost level,
it lay in patches that seemed silver shields, molten and shivering.
Elsie did not linger for an unnecessary second. Her lids were heavy,
her lips set, her whole look somber. She drew the folded news
account from her girdle, tore it into long strips, then into
fragments, and poured them on the ripples where they clung like a
trail of snowflakes before they were tossed on. From a silk handbag
she drew Arturo's crested ring and threw it into the deepest flow.
She saw it cut the air as a flying spark, strike on one of the
protruding stones, and rebound from this to the riotous stream whose
song came back to her from the shadows. It was gone.
The tearing to bits of the disclosure and the repudiation of the only
tangible thing that she had belonging to the concealed fragment of
her life had had the solemnity of a church rite to Elsie, and with it
the feeling that comes from the last spadeful of earth on a
grave,--as of something forever darkened, finished. Not until this
day had Arturo died for her.
CHAPTER XXVI
Robert played cards--played them absently--until late, and afterward
walked home with his guests. All this time his thoughts were of
Elsie. Before he slept he came to a decision: Simply by satisfying
his freshened longing to make his wife's life more pleasant, her
heart lighter, he would be able to answer Selena's antagonism with a
body blow. What could he do first? At once his thoughts turned to
material gifts.
This instinct, essentially masculine, makes one see the eager, asking
hands of women through recorded time. Jewels for Cleopatra, the
palfrey and the hawk brought by the mediaeval knight to his
castle-bred bride, the beads hung on squaws by countless Hiawathas,
down to the necklaces and pendants that to-day pass over the counters
of the great jewelers of the world for the women beloved of rich
men,--all bear witness to those little hands held out while,
consciously or not, eyes are bright with the question: "What will he
give me?"
So during his two days away from the mine, Robert spent all of one in
Caracas. There he picked out an electric landaulette that was padded
like a jewel case; he meant Elsie to learn to run it herself, without
having to depend on the family car that needed a man at the wheel.
He also bought a piano whose modern mechanism was housed in the frame
of an ancient spinet. Elsie never sang now; she was like a bird in
captivity gone mute; and he wanted to hear her voice again as he
remembered it in the days before the little child had died,--in old
English ballads and the love songs of Grieg that suited her sweet,
whispering tones, their twilight charm.
On returning from his walk the night before, he had found her sitting
in the _patio_, wrapped in the Spanish shawl, and had told her of
these intentions. At first he had been made happy by the sudden look
of affection that brought a glow to her dreaming eyes; as suddenly
chilled by its quick fading, when with unmistakable sincerity she
tried to dissuade him from buying the things for her. And though he
had made it plain how glad he would be to have her go with him on the
jaunt, she had given several reasons for remaining at home.
On the way to the capital he had sat with folded arms, the brim of
his Panama hat pulled into a point over his eyes with their savage
pain, and brooded upon these defeats. She had not wanted the
luxuries from him because they had seemed hampering obligations,
outside their compact. She had not wanted to go with him, and the
reasons given--a dislike of the effort in the heat, the closeness of
the train--had been dismissed by him as untrue. Simply she had not
wanted to go.
Of course no idea had come to him of the picture that his request had
flashed before Elsie on the springs of fear, in which she had seen
herself leaving for Caracas on the early morning train, remaining
absent until midnight or later, the letters coming three times
directly into Selena's hands. Even under previous circumstances she
could not have endured this; and less than ever from this time on,
since she had come to know that the mails were watched for by
Selena's mystified eyes as eagerly as by her own.
She was not up when Robert left, and a few hours after his departure,
on starting as usual for her morning walk, she had to steel herself
against the examining gaze from Miss Maury that she could feel follow
her as she strolled away; later in the day she managed to see Domingo
in time to get first word from him that no letters had come for any
one. These efforts, successful though they were, left her with a
feeling of desperation, her brain rasped as from some steady, nagging
sound. In consequence, when Robert reached home very late and
brightened to find her still up, waiting to hear his account of the
day, she was in reality keyed almost to hysteria from the unremitting
sense of an enemy in the house whose furtive suspicion dogged her.
Elsie slept badly that night. Another day had gone and the gray-blue
letter had not appeared. She lay on her bed--the Spanish bed of hot
countries; flat, only a coverlet over the springs in place of a
mattress, cool and smooth with its tightly drawn linen--and gazed
through the drapery of netting rising in clouds above her, toward the
moonlight that filtered through the window in the vaulted roof whose
ribbed divisions were like a bat's spread wings, while frantic hatred
of what she dreaded began in her.
It had been her inherent straightforwardness, alive even on that June
night of reckless joy and surrender, that had made her write the
literal truth to Robert. Ah, better for her if, being a rebel, she
had been a hard one! Far better if the wish to be fair had not urged
her pen to the words that had become her threatened defeat!
She had often lulled herself with her mother's belief that the letter
was part of a lost ship's cargo and safely at the bottom of the sea.
To-night, as she lay open-eyed with tensely shut hands, she could not
think so. A sense of prophecy kept saying to her that at last, maybe
when it would have even more destructive power than now, because she
would have more to lose, it would reach its haven and, unless she
were fortunate, make chaos of her life.
Where was it? Where, at that moment? In existence somewhere,
buffeted by accident and change, in having on long and slow journeys,
forward and back, followed Robert? Was it one of hundreds in some
forgotten mail sack? Neglected for a time in some post-office, would
it soon be on its way again? Was it already on its way?
If it had only come to-day. If, to-day, she had been able to _see_
it! If, with the first well-known and the anticipated marks of later
travel upon it, she had held it in her hands and had had the joy of
tearing if to bits as she had torn the printed tale that had unsealed
her eyes to the contemptibleness on which her folly had been built!
Oh, if it had only come to-day!
How long would she have to keep to her post as lookout while the cold
hatred of a nature that repelled her hung about her, as determined as
it was masked? How long must she feel uncertain, her eyes on the
next corner around which, at any moment, the sinister might step and
face her, its dark smile declaring: "You see I have come. Yes--after
all--I have come!" How long before she could feel the danger over?
...
She tossed in a distraught wakefulness.
As the tranquil weeks passed, the desire to have the letter arrive
and be destroyed by her became an obsession with Elsie. She was
daily coming to a more warm and wistful nearness to her husband.
Irresistibly she kept constantly seeing his reticence and
self-control against the memory of Arturo's pyrotechny of passion.
And Robert gained by the contrast. Arturo's unbridled display of
feeling took on the cheapness of redundancy beside what she had come
to know was uncompromising manhood in Robert, a pure, high pride.
Daily she saw, too, that this strength was only a breakwater to stem
a need of her whose hints of fury overleaping it had begun to call to
her, strong with the charm that misery and hunger can give to love.
Robert no longer suggested the almost fraternal, self-contained
husband of their earlier life; the absorbed worker who had for
periods lived on a different plane, she forgotten. Without knowing
it he was winning her because, bitterly unhappy without her, he could
not always prevent her seeing it. And this is sure to draw a woman
when a man is dear. It loses nothing in force because he is a
husband and not a lover. If the unhappy longing for her is there,
evident to her through circumstances of some sort that thwart it, he
becomes a lover, and the unrest from him is a flame that starts its
like in her until she is filled with steady consciousness of him.
Robert was far from realizing that such thoughts were Elsie's.
During these days he scarcely knew himself, his philosophy became so
inefficient and he so bitterly restive. At the mine his body would
move capably at his work while his mind was often far from it. The
early afternoon, his time of rest, began to have the allure that an
empty church has for one unhappy who out of the bustling midday
steals into its dusk and silence to sit in solitude, easing pain by
dwelling on it. In this hour he was always able to be alone in the
manager's house, and he would lounge in his easy, long-limbed way at
his desk, gazing through the open door, though not at what was
there,--limestone gorges whose riven and mangled sides were
damascened with a curious verdigris-brown; the crane, shaped like a
bent elbow, towering out of the darkness of the gut in the mountain's
side from which the machinery's turmoil seemed the roar of beasts;
strings of laden mules prodded by _mestizos_; forked and furrowed
heights in the distance; and, austerely remote, the mystic shimmering
white of an occasional peak, like heavenly watchers blanched with
disdain for the pigmies who despoiled the land, seeking what to their
mean conception meant power.
None of these things were real to Robert as he mused. His mind would
cling to pictures of his wife remembered from his previous visit
home; one, and then another, they kept haunting him. His heart would
burn in a dull way, and his body tremble at the thoughts of her that
began to creep in and endure.
Foremost was the belief that soon Elsie would leave him. As they
lived now, he was sure she saw herself a detached and parenthetical
thing in his home, something that daily became more irrelevant. She
would decide to go. And he would have to keep himself from one
prayer. She would vanish out of his life--this woman, so dear to
him, from whose fragility there came to him now hints of deeply
hidden fervor, something sensitively unquiet, a likeness to it in the
effect of the hair that made a wavering light about her intensely
white face where her eyes were pools of shadow.
She would go, uniquely unarmed against new and difficult issues, with
no close ties waiting to enfold her, no wiser brain to help. And he
would have to endure it. There would be silence and emptiness
afterward--as if she had died!--yet worse, since there would continue
with him to be savagely lived down the hideously belittling hurt that
belongs to failure.
So these two, confused, uncomprehending, would meet and part every
few days,--Robert's eyes on Elsie's face, watching for a sign that
did not come; and hers fixed on the void in which their lives spun
and where, distant or near there might be eddying, to come at last
into Robert's hands, her own renegade words of abjuration and
farewell that would send her value crashing into the splinters made
easily by the fall of a damaged thing.
CHAPTER XXVII
Elsie brought her car to a stop. Before she could step from the
satin interior where mirrors reflected the bouquets in hanging vases,
the stable-like front doors of the _hacienda_ were rolled to each
side from within by one of the _mestizos_, while another ran out to
help her alight and take charge of her many packages.
She had been in the town since the morning; had spent hours at the
sale of a library by an Englishman who was scattering his belongings
before returning home; had _almuerzo_ with one of her neighbors; and
had stopped at the post-office twice,--the visits having resulted in
only a few local letters, as the foreign mail, on the boat that had
reached La Guaira the day before, was not expected until some time
that night.
It was late March now, and the land was exotically splendid. Easter
was just over, its joyousness lingering on in the _festas_ of this
"month of Mary." Church processions were met constantly, mostly of
white-veiled little girls carrying lighted candles through the full
sunshine; after dark there was a flash of lanterns from groves on the
town's edge, where the natives danced; all day long until late at
night, from houses and street bands music came,--heady, richly sweet,
of uneven twisting tempo, a provocation to the body to sway, while
burning the heart with the trouble that belongs to love.
Elsie's imagination had given quick response to these notes of
passionate life, finding something exquisitely sensuous even in the
religious ecstacy that was like the flinging up of the arms of the
sad world toward the sky in freshened hope of happiness, keener
worship of the beautiful and good. She had gone about her projects
through the day in the dreaminess that the springtime, even in bare,
northern latitudes, can give,--a sense of budding in the root of
one's spirit; a something that enkindles, so that the saddest can
know briefly the ghost of old desires. And this delicately-sparked
languor was with her as she stepped into the flagged entrance hall
that, after the outside brilliance, seemed as black as a crypt.
Instantly she found that the shadow was the only likeness to a crypt.
The place rang with the clash of angry voices crossing each other in
dispute. As she paused, both tense and quivering, she realized there
were two speakers--Miss Maury and Candida--and they were in her room.
The upper part of the door that led to it from the hall was made of
stained glass, one of the panes lifted on a catch for air, so that
sound travelled clearly. Before turning the knob she stood listening.
"Don't try to defend yourself any further, you horrible girl. I have
told you what you are to do," came stridently from Selena.
"I won't do it!" This as a dolorous shriek from Candida. "You will
see! I shall go to the _festa_! You will see! When my _señora_
comes!--"
"You will do as _I_ say. Stand on your feet. Get up at once!"
"No! I shall die here first. I shall never get up!" Candida wailed.
"I will go to the _festa_!"
"You shall not move out of the house for a whole week!"
"The _señora_ will let me! I do not care for you or what you say!"
Elsie opened the door. From what she had heard she was prepared to
find Candida, with the native floridity of expression, crouching on
the floor, Selena standing above her. The added touches to the scene
took her breath. Candida was indeed on the floor, but fairly spilled
on it and garbed so that at first she gave the impression of
something between an attendant in a Turkish bath and a _hula-hula_
dancer.
She had on one of Elsie's filmiest nightgowns; this was dropped far
down from her shoulders and fastened under the armpits with a blue
and white towel as a sash; every ornament of Elsie's, including a
mass of native bead and metal necklaces chromatic in color, bought by
Robert as curiosities, clanked on her bared bosom; the claret-red
_bougainvillea_ made into huge rosettes were back of each ear; and
she had used the scent bottles so lavishly, that gusts of mixed
fragrance came upward with her every lurch.
All this, barbaric with her tawny flesh, suggested some jungle orgy;
her face, dumbfounding, marked its crescendo, as a long screech
might, for it was plastered with white and red, changed by crayon
daubing from every vestige of its own expression, her full lips under
a coat of scarlet paste seeming of negroid thickness. As tears ran
in cross streams over this mixture, a painter's pallette rag could
not have been more splashed.
Elsie's eyes took in these startling notes and, seeking explanation,
looked across at her toilet table. She found it there in the sight
of her old Paris box of cosmetics which stood open, its contents
scattered. As it was very pretty--a novelty of imported suede,
shaped like a valise--she had kept it in the bottom of a trunk, and
had not seen it since unpacking on her arrival at El Iris. That it
had made its impression on Candida's memory was evident to-day.
After a hopeless look at it, then at the girl who was now lying on
her back, her hands holding her head as if to keep it from flying
off, then at Selena who somehow gave the impression of a gray yarn
stocking standing in judgment over an artificial rose whose colors
had run in the rain, Elsie dropped into a chair, unable to keep back
an abrupt peal of laughter.
"Candida! You--you--!" She tried to find Spanish for a severe
reproof, failed, and broke into English. "You silly, silly creature!
How--how dared you?"
These words and the twist of fun that went with them acted like
electricity on Selena. Before Candida could do more than turn over
to crawl--hopefully, yet with the humility of a worm--toward her
young mistress, she changed from a yarn stocking to a crowbar. Her
face settled into grimness as she swept a look of wrath over Elsie.
"You can laugh at her! This girl is bad--_bad_--and you know it. I
find her here, half-naked this way, painted like a savage, twisting
and turning before that mirror, ogling herself over her shoulder, and
at last kissing--do you hear?--_kissing_ her own arm in a disgusting
admiration. And you laugh at her! Are you aware that you're making
yourself an ally of this creature's against me?"
Elsie had quickly sobered, her eyes very dark and with their still
look. Through the first words there had come to her nothing less
than the cold breath of hatred. She waited until Selena's question
died on a rasping note before she stood up.
"Aren't you exciting yourself without reason?" she said quietly.
"The girl hasn't committed a crime, you know." Without waiting for a
reply she looked down at Candida. "Are your clothes here?" she asked.
"_Si, señora_," Candida quavered. She had not understood a word of
the English and had kept looking from one to the other of the
speakers in the most racking anxiety.
"Go over there by the bed and put them on. Wash your face, too--at
once!"
Still Candida remained kneeling, trying miserably to read Elsie's
face for the one thing that was of moment to her.
"_Señora, señora,_" she bleated and thumped her head with fists as
hard as door knobs, "pardon me! I am sorry that I touched your
things. Do anything to me for that--to-morrow--only say that I can
go to the _festa_ with Domingo after dinner to-night!" She crawled
sinuously to where she could lay her cheek on Elsie's foot. "Only
say that, _señora_! Oh, say it, for the love of God, or I shall die!
I shall die here this minute--without a priest--if I cannot go!"
"You can't go!" Miss Maury interposed in her close-lipped voice and
painfully distinct Spanish. "I have told you so."
"Don't listen to her!" Candida shrieked and pressed rapid kisses on
the slipper's buckle. "She has no heart! She is made of stone, that
one! She is an old maid!"
Selena drew her breath through her nose with a hissing sound and
squared her shoulders. "You have heard me insulted," she said, and
fixed a waiting look on Elsie.
"Get up, Candida. You must ask Señorita Maury's pardon for what you
have said."
"I will! I will! Forgive me, _señorita_!" She swung about, tried
to embrace Selena's knees and, after getting a futile kick, swung
back to pray again to Elsie's foot. "But only say that I can go to
the _festa_ to-night with Domingo! Only say it!"
"Yes, you may go," Elsie said with almost a sorrowful kindness.
Selena's mouth opened with a snap. It stayed open. She grew
ghastly, and during the time that Candida laughed and cried and
called down blessings from heaven on her _señora_ while hurrying to
the corner to change to workday clothes, she remained looking at
Elsie with an icy rage that had an enduring quality.
"You mean what you said to her?" she demanded at last, not above a
breath.
"Yes, I mean it!"
"After you heard me tell her she could not go?"
"Even after that."
"Are you not going to punish her?" Her eyes with some envenomed
meaning remained fixed on Elsie's face that seemed as quiet as it was
deadly pale.
Inwardly she was far from quiet. Unrest, whose root was in her own
sense of guilt, made her draw back from those cold eyes that seemed
reading the secrets of her heart across the gulf between them. With
this the throb of wilfulness natural to her could not be kept down
and broke into words.
"I think she has been punished enough. You frightened her almost to
death at the thought of losing her night's dancing. She's young.
She's full of the love of life, the desire to be happy. Unlike you,
I don't believe she means any harm. You merely saw a dress rehearsal
of her idea of gorgeousness. As for using that cosmetic stuff of
mine? Well, of course, she made herself utterly absurd--poor
Candida! In the first place nature has made her almost too vivid and
she did not need it; besides, she used too much!"
"So _that's_ the way you look at it." The grim meaning of her look
intensified. "You don't denounce her for this gross exhibition, for
making herself look like--well, like something I won't even name.
You'll find the word in the Old Testament!" she flung out.
"I'm not as well acquainted with the Bible as you are, Selena," Elsie
answered, and managed a smile. "But isn't the New Testament kinder?
Isn't there something very beautiful about charity and not judging?"
Candida had placed the borrowed clothes, folded, on the bed, and
called out, while wildly flickering her dark, fine fingers: "Gracias,
_señora! Ah, gracias, gracias,_" as she made an emotional exit.
A silence followed. It seemed to Elsie to hold the menace of poised
vitriol. Her nerves grew rigid in a way that called for some sort of
violence as relief. It would have soothed her to have taken Selena
by the shoulders and thrust her from the room. She stifled this
feeling under her still seeming calm, took off her hat, and
unfastened her gown.
"No time now to rest before dinner," she said, sitting before the
mirror while drawing the pins from her hair. "Robert'll be along
very soon. He said he'd surely get here to-night, and it's almost
seven. Hadn't you better get ready?"
Selena presented a strange picture. She remained very stiff in the
center of the bedroom, her dry mouth working in the fumbling way of
the old when excited. Some imp seemed possessing her, urging her to
speak while she struggled to be wise and resist.
Elsie's bare shoulders and arms, over which the wheat-colored hair
had come glistening down, decided her. To half-undress before her
like that!--It was something she would never, even if ill, have
thought of doing herself! It was of a part with the sort of
underwear that was disclosed,--scarcely more than gauze; of a part
with the paints and powders in that French box; of the sinful and
passionate account in the newspaper months ago, and that she was sure
had not been shown to Robert; a part too of Candida's shamelessness
and this young woman's easy and cynical amusement at it! Her
prejudices boiled to white heat and a sour froth. Silence became
impossible.
"I have a few words to say to you before I go," shot breathlessly
from her. Her voice, though tense and clipped, was far-carrying.
"Yes?" and Elsie began combing her hair. She expected some questions
or information about household affairs, and from the tone something
of a fault-finding nature.
"You may as well know what I honestly think of the whole situation in
this house," were Selena's first surprising words. "That girl was
able to gratify her evil instincts--through you. Here in your room
she found all that she needed in that disgusting French box--oh, I
looked at the name on it! Besides, one glance would show that it
could only have come out of Paris. It's easy to see, too, that the
contents were often used before--often! So it's no wonder you'd
laugh at her and send her away rejoicing in her vicious inclinations.
Why not? Why should I expect you to do anything else? Except that
in her silly masquerade she was a caricature, I'm sure she was much
what you were in Paris," she sneered slowly.
"If one could only know all the truth of that time it would be
interesting, I've no doubt--though hardly improving."
Elsie's hand with the comb had dropped, her attention changing to a
stare of dumb bewilderment at Selena. The attack, unbelievably
daring, had so startled her she felt as if a metallic clang had
struck upon her brain, for a moment paralyzing it.
"You must remember that _I_ have been in Paris. Only once--and that
was enough. One glimpse of the night life there sent Mrs. Hoskins
and me flying from it in disgust. But I know the place, you see. I
also know the meaning of your cosmetics, for I caught sight of a
flashlight photograph among your things--a crowd of masqueraders, you
among them in a rag of black gauze above your ankles, your face all
made up with that mess and a lot of black patches. You never use the
stuff now--too cautious?--And what of that newspaper clipping you got
in February? You left it behind you in the patio, and I glanced at
it. Your mother sent it--and a nice account!" Her pause here was
expressive before she added with edged slowness: "Was the society
woman mentioned in it--a _friend?_--Oh, I know you don't think me
worth your attention," she continued complacently, "--think me old
and dull! But you're mistaken. I can put two and two together as
quickly as you can! I've watched your inspection of every letter
that comes to this house and ahead of any one else!" Spurred to more
vigor by the dazed guilt Elsie could not keep out of her face, she
became coarse under her attenuated refinement. "I've seen my poor
brother fooled by you while all the time he's of no value to you
except as a check book! But let me tell you that even without these
facts I'd see through you by instinct! There are things that good
women _feel_. There are things that the wrong sort of women can't
hide from them. After your treatment of me here to-day before that
horrible girl, I made up my mind to let you know just what I think.
But I've no fear that you'll dare to complain of me to my
brother--you'd be afraid that he--"
The door to the hall came inward sharply and Robert stood there. He
remained in the opening, his hand pressed down on the knob. A sick,
white look to his face showed as grayness through its brown; his eyes
were as sad as they were stern; yet they were stern in a way to
inspire fear, the pupils so spread there was almost no ring of blue
around them.
After the briefest glance, all sorrow and an angry sort of tenderness
at Elsie, he spoke to his sister, whose head had jolted up in
defiance, though her look was as frightened as that of a horse
balking at a precipice.
"I heard some of what you said, Selena--not much--but enough!" He
pushed the door wider. "I want to speak to you."
CHAPTER XXVIII
"Well--speak!" Selena cried, trembling.
"Outside," said Robert, and added bitterly, "where you belong."
He did not look again at Elsie, who had turned away, her elbows on
the toilet table, her hair cloaking her shoulders. As Selena still
fluttered obstinately without moving from where she stood, he came to
her and in a quietly authoritative way that counted out discussion,
led her by the arm until close to the threshold. There she shook
herself free.
"Don't imagine I'll stay in this house another hour--not one!" she
said to him in a storm of cold rage.
"Excellent." Robert ran this in, an approving comment, a likeness in
it to the thud of a rubber stamp affixing a signature.
"I can see just what you'll do and say--just the sort of fool you'll
continue to be!--There's a boat for the States on Wednesday. The
Suttons are going on it.--I'll get to Valencia to-night. I'll stay
at a hotel and take the morning train to Caracas and join the Suttons
there. As fast as I can throw my things into a trunk I'll
go.--Someone's got to drive me to Valencia in half an hour.--Nothing
will induce me to spend another night in this house!"
"Your decision couldn't be improved on, and I'll drive you in,
myself," Robert said in a new and peaceful tone. "I'll see you made
comfortable there. I'll see, too, that you are comfortable as long
as you live. But not in my house. Never with me again! What else I
have to say to you won't be said here."
Elsie heard the door close. She remained just as she was, gazing in
a dull way into the glass. All of her quivered in restrained
excitement after the whole disrupting scene from which two things
separated, grew sharpened--Robert's weary yet flashing face with
almost an anguish of protectiveness in his one look toward her, and
two phrases of Selena's that had a lash's sting: "There are things
that _good_ women feel. There are things that the wrong sort of
woman can't hide from them."
Was this true? In dreary desperation she studied her face. Often
she had felt it strange that no mark of the heart-shaking passion and
grief suffered at El Miradero had fixed itself outwardly upon her,
that she should have remained so ingenuously fair. She had been
wrong? That she was a woman who had, in effect, become a man's
mistress and as a result had quickly known horror, terror, the
brackish taste of brutal disrespect, the present sense of day by day
deceit were all there, somewhere?--in some faint, betraying mark,
like the covert speck of blight in a fair fruit?
Deep sadness went over her. Without moving, in a trance of
heaviness, her thoughts began a requiem for all her failings, for her
ill fortune and for loss. If, long ago, she had insisted on going to
Burmah with Robert!--If she had never spun in the Paris _danse
macabre_.--Or, going there, had held fast to gravity, strength; had
struggled harder against Arturo's seductive power, killed her
infatuation for him at the beginning!--If she had but gone to England
with Robert that night in June!--If she had parted from Serafin in
time--had not gone up the mountain with him!--If her eyes had never
rested on El Miradero!--If she could go back and be no more committed
to the wrong than was the foolish _mondaine_ who had alighted at
Bilbao packed full of good intentions, with no memory now of one
black and galling night to bruise her and no record of her madness
there, written by herself and floating somewhere in the world, to
fear!
Still motionless, her thoughts slipped to an earlier block of her
life and she saw herself as a very young mother in grief over an
adored child who would never speak to her again. That pain had not
died. The pang of loss where there has been deep love cannot die.
Years pass above it only as snow falls on a garden, cloaking its form
but with the living seed underneath, so that memories doing the work
of the warm spring rains will bring the flower of pain magically to
life over and over.
With this thought the cry that had silently crept through her in the
bedroom at El Miradero, before beginning her letter, rose with
unbearable sadness within Elsie--Ah, had her darling lived! ... And
on this another longing pressed--Ah, had she then loved Robert as she
knew, to-night, that she had surely come to love him!
Her head sank lower, her eyes closed, she felt half-swooning in
regret. And then, far down in the blackness back of her shut eyelids
into which her knuckles were dug with unconscious force, there
floated before her sight the face of another little child with much
of the irresistible beauty of the one she had lost. From a vast
distance it glimmered, ghostlike--came nearer--smiled at her--a faint
smile at first that changed slowly to a very wistful appeal for
welcome. "Don't you want me?" the look said. "Wouldn't I comfort
you? Wouldn't you love me?" ...
Elsie's breath broke. She kept yearning watch upon the small
wide-eyed face, so like a blossom and a star. When it would drift
from her, almost sink back into the shadows from which it had stolen,
her will recalled it, held it before her with tenacity and adoration.
She shivered, her heart seemed breaking, her throat was thick with
pain. She was in the throe of the most ancient ache of woman since
the beginning of the world. Ah, here was her need! This, and this
alone, could make true happiness for her. She was that sort of
woman--needing love and loving motherhood. The little cajoling face,
with shy eyes and a mouth like an opening bud, made her know this
now. Now!--In the confusion of her life, in the turmoil of regrets,
and the dread.
A clicking sound, with subservience in it, pierced the deep
stillness. Elsie recognized it as the tapping of Candida's long
nails on the stained glass of the door into the hall. At a call to
enter, she came bearing a letter.
A very different Candida this, from the one that had brought judgment
clattering on her head. Her drenched and plastered hair, sleek as a
skullcap, was dragged so tightly into a door-knob knot, the strain
must have hurt her face; her skin glistened like brown earthenware
from a harsh scrubbing with soap; her gown was her plainest
butcher-blue nankeen. With these notes she had taken on the mild
stare of a cow and the deference of an undertaker. She was, in fact,
so unnaturally sedate, counterfeit was written upon her from crown to
toe.
After Elsie gave a look at the letter that showed her Robert's
writing, her attention came back to Candida. Her thoughts of the
regrettable in her own life had softened and enriched her sympathy
for the young girl who, in her elemental way, was struggling in the
grasp of the furies that make for discontent in women and plan their
mistakes.
"Wait a moment, Candida, I want to ask you something," she said with
great kindness, looking seriously into the black eyes that sprang
suddenly wide with an inquiry in which there was fear. "Miss Maury
says that you are not a good girl. Tell me the truth. Are you?"
Candida tried to speak, choked, and after a silence her face gave a
twist of misery.
"Is Domingo a good man? Does he want to marry you?" Elsie's labored
Spanish gave the words peculiar impressiveness. "Is it marriage for
you, Candida?"
"He says so, _señora_. And oh--I _am_ good!" She grew suddenly
wild, flung both arms across her eyes and rocked as if to solemn
music. "I am--_still_--good! But Domingo tries to make me not care
to stay good." Her arms dropped. A distraught look had come to her
eyes. "He says we are fools to waste our lives without love, I know
he will say that again at the _festa_ to-night. Oh, it is so long to
wait to marry! One gets old so soon! Why, look--I am
almost--twenty!"
Elsie lifted one of the beautiful citron-colored hands, icy cold in
the fingers, the palm burning--and held it in a friend's way.
"Why can't you marry--if he is good--wants you for his wife?"
"He has no money now, _señora_."
"He has his wages and you have yours. You could both still live
here, together. Wouldn't this be enough for a beginning?"
"Ah, no, _señora_," Candida said sadly, torso, head, lips and brows
all fluttering in a negation that had a breeze's sweep. "You see he
had saved two thousand _pesetas_--but he had to send it all to his
sister in Bolivia. His old mother and father live with her, and they
were very sick. As for me, to work here after I marry--how could
that be? How could I wait upon you, _señora_, when I would be having
a baby? You would not want me--that way!"
Elsie smiled at the barbarous simplicity of the words. "That might
not happen at once"--
"Oh, yes, it would! _Si! Si!_ My mother--very quickly--she had
sixteen," Candida sighed, nodding briskly.
"Very well. Now listen to me." Elsie patted her hand and in her
slow Spanish spoke earnestly, as if to a child. "Domingo will marry
you without delay, and I will get another maid when it is necessary.
To-morrow the _señor_ will give him the two thousand _pesetas_. I
will ask him to do this. Then there will be no more unhappiness for
you. What do you say, Candida?"
It would be impossible to translate what Candida said. In a whirl of
broken cries she dropped to her knees and, as before, laid her cheek
on Elsie's slipper.
"Don't talk to my foot!" Elsie smiled and gave a little push to the
prostrate shoulder. "Come, come! Look at _me_, my dear."
"_Madre mia!_" Candida, in an ecstacy of tears, was now risen to her
knees and addressing the raftered ceiling. "Ah, _mira_! See!--see
an angel is standing here who turns all poor Candida's sorrow to joy!
Ah, _mira_!--so beautiful, so excellent, so wonderful, so perfect,
so--"
"That's enough, Candida," Elsie laughed. "Now stand up." And as she
did so, breathless, shining, still muttering enthusiasms, her young
mistress gazed into her eyes with a sadness that enveloped her, made
a deep quiet fill her. "I will do this for you. What will you do
for me?"
"Anything, _señora_! Whatever the _señora_ wants is hers!"
"_Buéno_! Here, then is what I want--that, for me, you give up the
_festa_, that you do not go to the dance in the woods with Domingo
to-night."
For a few seconds Candida was sheer blankness,--her look almost
idiotic from disappointment.
"Domingo must go," said Elsie, "but alone. You will be at home with
me--safe! Do you understand, my dear?"
Candida lifted her brows. One index finger shot to her lips,
remained pressed there, conveying caution. She suddenly twinkled
into a smile of the most hardened guile. "Yes, I understand. He to
go and be sorry--so he could _die_!--that I am not there with him.
And I to be happy here, alone--since marriage is so near. Ah! how
wise my young _señora_ is-- And may I tell him now?"
"In a moment. Wait outside the door while I read my letter. There
may be an answer."
"But the _señor_ has gone," Candida cried.
"Gone!" Elsie said this in her thoughts.
"Yes, he was a long time in his room, then brought out the letter,
then took Señorita Maury and her trunks off in the big car. He drove
it himself."
Elsie waited until the girl, with a rocking sort of rapture, had
hurried away, before she opened the envelope:
"My dear Elsie--I don't want to see you until I've seen the last of
Selena. I can't explain her atrocious conduct except as a sort of
insanity that sometimes attacks the old. People grow old in many
ways, but there are two that stand out prominently, I've often
noticed. They grow tender and dim like sweet lavender, long faded,
as it steals from an old-time trunk; or they grow rank and bitter
like wine that changes to vinegar, and this generally when they have
kept themselves separate from the things that make living a real and
unselfish thing, as Selena has. She is the result of a stonily
detached life--one without a high heartbeat or a missed
beat--centralized in a dry, bleached way. So make what allowances
you can for her.
"I shall take her away without having you go through the formality of
leave-taking with her. In your kindness probably you would want
this. I do not. She does not deserve it.
"I'll stay with her until she is satisfactorily settled for the
night, and I won't be back till late. Please forget as soon as you
can, her hideous and outrageous insults. Eat your dinner, rest, try
to sleep. I will see you in the morning when we will not speak of
this thing at all. Let us never speak of it! You know all that I
feel and must not say.
"As always, yours--ROBERT."
The pages fluttered to Elsie's knees. She sat very still, turned
sideways in the chair, her elbow on top of it. Out of all the words
that set forth Robert's allegiance to her, she was intensely
conscious of one short phrase: "She does not deserve it." Ah, there
was the judgment that was in him under all his generosity! She saw
it as a steel bar, hidden under a cloak of kind leaves, even of
flowers.
Following the consciousness of the words, others came out of
herself--thin, apprehensive, sick--and joined them, trailing after
them: "He will meet Domingo on the road, coming back with the evening
mail--with the foreign letters. He will stop and take his own.--He
will take his own!" ...
CHAPTER XXIX
It was nearly eleven when Robert said good-by to Selena. During the
time spent together Elsie's name had not been mentioned between them,
though thought of her was very present back of their new formality
and during the businesslike arrangement of Selena's future and
income. She refused to eat and he dined alone in the public room of
the hotel, taking her afterward to talk to relatives of the people
she was to join in Caracas the next day, and even waiting there until
she was ready to leave, so that he might return with her to see her
comfortably settled for the night.
"I hope that when we meet, Selena, time will have softened what is so
cruel in you now," were Robert's last words as, after the parting, he
gave a fling to his sharply level shoulders and turned again to gaze
earnestly and kindly at her.
"I don't want to be softened!" Selena rapped back with fierce
coldness, her drawn-in body looking more than usually bony. "And I
guess time is about through with me. It won't bother trying any more
hemstitching or embroidery on me. The pattern I am--I stay. You
don't like it. Well, you needn't. I _do_! Good-by."
As he drove back in the radiance of big stars that showed the land in
velvet-black outlines, and the mountains ahead of him as wraiths of
snow in jagged drifts, he felt relief that the chapter with Selena
was closed; that in the home he was nearing no one waited for him but
a woman infinitely dear.
The night was hot and dry. Small winds made by the motion of the car
beat upon his face with the effect of a child's blows given in play;
they were rich in perfume, mostly the luring mixture of the rose's
sweetness with the carnation's spice. Music swept to him in cross
currents along his way,--Spanish music that is metrical love.
These impressions of warmth, fragrance and melody crept through his
senses, fretted them to rebellious pain, while lulling them to the
exquisite sort of helplessness that the sick can know even when
conscious of losing blood that takes life with it. Glad to be
returning to Elsie, his thoughts of her had roots in sadness.
Selena's continued suspicions of her interest in another man he dwelt
upon with the ironic smile of the analyst who knows the core of a
subject that superficial observers take at some chance value. Even
so, while he dismissed this possibility, his fancy knew a crushing
feeling,--the drag-down of jealousy, its humbling sickness.
Another man in his wife's life? A lover, waiting somewhere? He let
himself consider this, and the answer was swift. No, no! Elsie was
not false. While he felt that her years in Paris--a heady drink for
her ignorance--had damaged her transiently in taste and in point of
view, he did not believe they had corrupted her. She had been born
candid to bluntness,--a certain volatile wilfulness natural to her
when she was happy, but always open; no duplicity in her. If what he
felt underlay Selena's insinuations were true, she would have told
him so straightly at their meeting in New York. She could not have
been persuaded to come back to him even in a half sense. Nor would
he have wanted this.
Certain of her honesty, his mind swung back to the questions that
went with him day by day: Why had she changed to him so completely?
Why had the years apart taken from her all need of him except as a
friend for an occasional hour? By degrees he believed he read the
answer: It could only be that from the beginning she had given him no
more than a child's fondness mixed with gratitude for his wanting her
since she had suffered for so long as an encumbrance in her mother's
life. Yes, there lay the answer to the failure he faced now; she had
never loved him; he had not made her love him.
For a long time knowledge of a change in himself had been deepening.
He was piercingly conscious of it to-night. Selena had been a
special illumination; she had poured light into the corners of his
soul. That day, as they stood at issue in Elsie's doorway, there had
been, faintly, in the intolerance and austerity of her older face
with eyes the color of his own, just enough of the mystery of family
likeness to startle him. In it he had seen himself. At the thought
his face flushed; he flinched, hating it, while in his unsparing way
he continued to face it. It was true. The prudery that had made of
Selena a warped celibate had likeness to a certain precisianism and
asceticism in himself that in earlier years had mastered him; had
made him know almost a sensuous joy in the pain he had to endure to
acquire a perfection of self-control.
He scrutinized this strata of character as he would a vein in a mine,
searching for its source. Looking far back, he saw it emanate from
the first Christians who in the frenzy of conversion had labelled all
sex feeling weakness of the flesh, even sin; saw it pass on to the
stern, self-punishing Puritans--a strong strain of whose blood was in
him--people self-mesmerized into an hypocrisy that had made life as
ugly as a stone.
When bone-paring economy had enabled him to go through college, it
was with aloofness to the subjects that he studied the classics. He
had despised the suave and tolerant philosophers, had steeled himself
against the whole pagan cult that had made human love and the beauty
of the human body natural blessings of which to be joyously
unashamed, the very sun being called to witness the wonder.
And he remembered how this fixed strength had remained with him when
college was past and his hard struggle toward success was begun,
doing good in keeping his life pure, doing harm in taking the red
corpuscles from imagination, limiting its color wholly to the gray of
self-denial.
After his marriage there had been no marked change. He had loved
Elsie in a big way with his lucid and kindly mind; affection for her
was as natural to his heart as to a child's; but in the house of his
spirit, passion had been a visitor on sufferance who had sidled in
with an apologetic air, willing to hide on back stairs and in secret
closets, to wait for moments when it would be permitted to break from
obscurity and restraint, fling open doors and declare itself owner;
and always after this brief assertion of power--still with its
apologizing smirk--again be shut away.
He was different now, because he was older, and the years--in sevens,
like a series of waves--had brought new flotsam to character. He had
quickened from informing experiences in strange, remote lands. And
with substantial success, his senses, taking on softness and color,
had become assertive. For a long time now the purism that had
ordered repression of his physical side, while giving wrong names to
the simple and natural forces of life, had disintegrated, and so
thoroughly that he had often laughed at that other Robert Maury as a
sanctimonious _precieux_. He did not laugh to-night,--not when, with
hopelessness, he remembered that the man he used to be was the one
Elsie had known as a husband and from whom her heart had easily
slipped away, very likely forever. A sad fever filled him.
In the shadow of the gates of his home a servant was lounging,
waiting to take charge of the car. Robert entered silently. It was
close to midnight, and he felt sure that Elsie would be asleep. The
glass of her door was dark. Only a lantern, hanging from the high
ceiling, burned in the center of the hall, its light through stained
slides seeming a crimson star in mid-air. The place was so solemnly
still he could hear a clock ticking in the heart of the house.
He drew off his driving coat and the cap that was pulled over his
eyes, passed Elsie's room with careful quiet, and going through the
arch crossed the starlit _patio_ to where the chairs were grouped.
It was silent there, too, with nothing heard but the fountain's
chime, and the impulse to smoke for a while in the freshness before
turning in became stronger. He would dismiss the thoughts that had
been tormenting him to no hopeful end and consider in detail a
situation at the mine that must quickly be brought to a conclusion,
one way or the other.
Olazaba, the Venezuelan, and the native landowners back of him had
refused to abide by his refusal of their proposition, and after more
than a month's silence had begun again with what seemed an
accumulation of fresh, sound facts, to try to convince him of the
value of their desire to amalgamate with him. They had impressed
him, and yet to-night, with enthusiasm fading, the inclination to
agree was retreating from him.
What, after all, did he positively know of Olazaba or his backers?
And what of this instinct that, when he seemed near a decision to
present their proposal to his New York principals, made him shy from
the ultimate step? While the Venezuelans talked, the thing would
seem plausible and right. As soon as he was alone he could not keep
from seeing, as a sort of persistent vision, the huge blocks of the
old stock in their dead half of the mine that, after the fusion with
him had gone quietly through, they would buy back from the many small
and hopeless holders of it at what would seem a good price, though in
reality--when the market value was published--a very poor one. His
far-seeing, shadowless, Scotch mind could not escape the picture of
his company committed to the enormous expense of tunnelling through
the mountain while the listed stock rose steadily in value, and then
just before the failure of the undertaking became public--if failure
came--all these men, with the persuasive Olazaba well in the
foreground, unloading their worthless holdings at the top price; a
thing which his people's money and their high repute had made
possible.
Moreover, when he was away from Olazaba with his almost perfect
English, he felt distrust of him,--though mixed with an inclination
to resist the feeling. The man's personality was the most puzzling
he had ever met; it drew one to belief with a tidelike suction, flung
one back from it as if on the next incoming wave. Robert received
from association with him a restful sort of fascination on which
would trail an amused questioning as to just what price Olazaba could
be made to quote to sell his dearest friend? When the man would
declare, on the many highly colored oaths that a Spaniard can pour
out with staggering richness and naïveté, that he did not, himself,
own one _peseta's_ worth of the earlier stock, that he was merely
spokesman for those who had much of it, Robert did not believe him at
all, knew from one or two items of information that had come his way,
that Olazaba had been crippled by the collapse of the old mine.
Nevertheless, childish liar though the man was about his own affairs,
what he advocated for the New York company might be the giant's
league boots to great fortune, and if it were--
The thought broke. The match that he had struck dropped from
Robert's fingers. His eyes were used now to the soft yet clear light
from the stars, hanging low in the southern sky like heavenly
lanterns, and they rested upon Elsie. She was lying there in one of
the long chairs. She was wrapped to the chin, like a big papoose, in
a velvet motor rug and fast asleep in the starry night.
This coming to the _patio_ had been the result of a mood with her.
After hearing from Domingo that the foreign mail would not arrive
until the morning, her mind had been relieved. Nevertheless, as she
made ready for bed, the silence of the house, accented by distant
chatter from the servants' quarters, had produced a petrifying
feeling of loneliness; much like the dissociation she had felt as a
child in the crowded New York hotels when, after Aunt Esther had left
her with admonitions to go to sleep instantly, she had lain with
tight little fists and eyes rigidly open upon the darkness, listening
to the many sorts of life that whispered and rustled past her door.
She had looked at the huge foreign bed under the pagoda-like netting
and had seen it as a rock on which she would be sure to toss, her
brain more alive than in the daytime. In contrast to this, the air
that came in at the window when she rested her cheek against the iron
bars was as cool, friendly fingers on her face, cajoling her to come
out. And the fountain's tinkling splash had called to her.
She had obeyed. Over one of the inconsiderable gowns on which
Selena's disapproval had fallen, she had put a coat-shaped garment of
a silken Eastern fibre, an iridescent lilac in color, had snatched up
the velvet rug from a chair in the hall and with a pair of mules on,
had gone to find peace under the sky.
Robert moved but a few cautious steps to stand beside her where he
could see her face plainly. It was turned only slightly sideways and
glimmered up at him, an oval of ivory, yet with a living glow about
it as she slept there in the blue bloom of the night. Something that
hurt him spoke wistfully from it,--the Madonna clearness of the brow
with the pale, plaited hair falling away with gravity and simplicity
on each side; the full lids exactly like lustrous white tulip leaves
laid upon her sight; a patience, rightfully belonging to an older
face, that showed in the droop of the lips. She made him remember a
picture of the dead Elaine in her barge, going "upward with the
flood." He yearned over her.
And as with folded arms he remained there so close to her, he was
acutely conscious of how far away he was in all that meant living.
The two agonies of passion and renunciation filled him,--their
flavors of lost happiness, self-disgust at failure. His eyes closed
heavily.
CHAPTER XXX
Though only a moment, it seemed to Robert a long time that he stood
so. When he looked at Elsie again he saw that she had awakened.
She was lying in strained stillness, watching him. Some direct
meaning in her unmoving gaze was like the heat of the sun, a pulling
power in it. He could not stir or speak. A look of suffering stole
into his face as he remained entranced, the muscles of his folded
arms controlled to the rigor of iron. Through the increasing pain he
was sure of his strength.
And then, quick on the wake of this confidence, he found himself on
his knees beside her.
"Elsie!" The one word told all, desperation and torture in it. He
drew the velvet rug sharply from her lowered chin, pulled it down
far, and on the long splash of her throat pressed his burning face.
"Are you angry?" He asked this over and over, trembling. "Do you
send me away? Must I go away?" he implored, his voice so husky she
could scarcely hear him.
When her answer came it was an impact upon sensation. A suggestion
of the ineffable in her yearning movement, she turned fully to him.
Her face was sultry, convulsed. Her arms went about his head,
wrapping him as if sheltering him from some hurt that threatened, and
in a blaze she gave her lips generously to him, clung to him with
them, breathless, relaxed.
The delight of the deep kiss was anguish to Robert, while it remade
the world. A lambent rapture swept over him unlike anything he had
ever felt before. It was almost a moment before he could speak.
When he did, and faintly, the words came with conviction through
wonder and distraught joy: "You love me! Elsie, you love me! Oh,
you love me!"
She drew away. Her parted lips had a look of thirst, and he knew
they were burning; yet in her eyes, through the radiance, there was a
sorrow that confused him,--heavy sorrow, much like what he had
watched there years before when, grieving for the child, she had sat
apart, tearless and tragic in a loneliness that a million clamoring
to engage her could not have filled. Her reply, given slowly,
matched this dark memory, full of some meaning he could not grasp.
"I love you so much my heart is breaking." And with this clear,
straight statement, she sank down, turned her face from him. "Go
away," he heard her whisper. "Go, please."
"Go?" he mocked. He even laughed. His arms went avidly around her
body, her smoothness and slenderness thrilling every nerve. "Look at
me!" he commanded. She did and met his ravenous lips that went over
every little bit of her face, while frayed whispers came,--nothing
too wild nor too violent to say; nor too pleading, too abject, too
foolish.
Filled with a weakening joy, Elsie lay against him, tasting in that
strange, mixed moment a strong draught of life. Deep, sweet love was
there, and delight that ran high, and regret profoundly black
curdling it.
Her mind had a vision apart from the real, magical though it was.
She knew that the time had come when choice must be made,--confession
or a final silence. And through this grinding realization she
retained the appearance of love, of surrender.
"I believe now," she heard Robert say in a tone of intolerable
delight, "that you have loved me all the time--all the time, my
sweet, and did not know it yourself. Oh, you are just the same Elsie
that I have loved from the beginning, with a wild heart in you that I
never knew of till to-night--mad, sweet, passionate, wonderful
darling!--Oh, why did you leave me so long alone? How I have missed
you! I have been so wretched! To-night, driving home, I knew all
that a homesick exile suffers. And more than this--my fancies
carried me into hell in imagining that I might have to lose you,
sooner or later, to some man that you'd love. I was jealous--but
that word tells nothing!--I didn't know there could be such a killing
pain on earth as what I felt for a while as I drove home. And
now?--You love me. You do. Oh, you love me!"
There was something uncanny, almost dreadful to her in the fact that
as Robert caressed her, drunk with her, and while with lips and eyes
and the touches of her small, alluring hands she responded to him,
there were equally clear to her mind such grimly dissimilar pictures
and the questions they created.
Could she not by this time count herself free from danger? The
letter had not come, and every day that would pass without bringing
it--days in which now as independent mistress of her home she could
watch for it at her ease--would be as another stone laid upon the
house of security. This suspense over, what else had she to fear?
The published account of Arturo's death had been and gone without
reaching Robert's eyes; as a newspaper sensation it had had its turn,
to be swamped by fresher happenings, and most surely by the tragedies
of the war.
No one of her Paris friends except Paula Vrain knew that she had been
the only guest at El Miradero that night; and doubtless Arturo's
death had softened her enough to keep her tongue from gossip of the
dupe on whom her trap had closed more cruelly than she had meant, for
bad as she was--and she was a thoroughly bad woman in being a
malicious one--she had, in her way, loved Arturo.
There was left Serafin, the servant, who hated her. She hardened
herself to view him from every point as a possible danger. He was
her enemy, a lasting one, implacable,--but he was distant, in Spain
or Paris; in all likelihood she would never see him again. Still if
from the unlooked-for chance that happens once in a thousand times he
should cross her path, perhaps in New York, he would feel himself
powerless to do her harm. He would not know that Robert had not
received the letter, and learning that she was with her husband, he
would assume that its confession had not been allowed to end their
marriage; so as there would seem to be no chink in her armor through
which a knife-thrust from him could pierce, he would be uninterested.
No, she need not fear Serafin.
These thoughts made their revolutions in Elsie's mind during a few
seconds. Side by side with Robert's ignorance, they made a terrible
impression on her imagination. The tremendous, nailed-down solitude
and secrecy of the mind! Two to be face to face, even in such
moments as was this, and with chasms between them in thought! He did
not dream! If he knew, if he knew! If he could see what was so
plain to her! ...
She could endure no more. Her arms closed frantically about Robert,
almost a panic in her half-closed eyes. She must hold him. Now that
she loved him, she must keep him. There would be things of which she
would never speak. He must never know of the night that had been to
all other nights of her life as a searing burn on cool and smooth
flesh.
"I will never cause you pain again," she said. "You'll see. I'll
live only to make you happy. Only that!"
"And I will never fail you."
What followed was wonderful, the mystic in it. Elsie, blanched,
except for the agate-black pupils and the bright stain of her mouth,
was the ghost of a woman in the starlight, yet one on fire. And
Robert, with the accent of confident, enraptured possession in the
embrace, drew her up to him, quite over the couch's edge, and clasped
her as if they were alone on some small bit of land, one in being,
clinging fast to each other for safety against the sea that swirled
in great rises and threatened them. Elsie felt exalted in another
way--that made her want to kneel, her heart a welter of
humility--unimportant, except as she responded to this conquering
emotion.
It held something greater than their passion and love; separated from
self. It was a mighty force that owned them. It was a call to
life--to her, to him--but far more to those others to come after
them. It was not a passive thing, submitted for their choosing or
rejection. It was singularly, impressively Nature's; the omnipotent
in it; both of them as seeds beneath it, to be used and spent at its
supreme Will.
Robert lifted her up as if she were a child. Standing straight, and
holding her to him so that her face was against his throat, he
studied her with a sacred sort of tenderness.
"Do you remember, my darling, years ago--after Letty died--when you
were so sick, and you wandered off, and I found you alone in the
woods face down on the wet ground, crying your heart out--and how I
carried you home for more than a mile just this way? Do you remember
it?"
"None of the things of that time are clear to me, Robert--only that I
seemed alone in a world that frightened me--a gray world," she said,
the tremble of sad memory in it. She smiled up at him then, and
sighed. "You are carrying me home to-night. And I love you now.
Oh, I love you now!"
Held so--she glowing weakness resting in his strength--Robert, for
the first time, went up the gallery steps to his wife's room.
CHAPTER XXXI
A spirit of gayety had come to El Iris. For six weeks Elsie had been
mistress of the house. The servants responded with delight to her
new authority, persuasive and confiding where Miss Maury's had been
fear-compelling. Quick to see the reunion of master and mistress,
they would nudge each other and smile as they watched them meeting
and parting with every sign of sympathetic intimacy. More than ever
they hated their former tyrant's memory; came to see her as the evil
eye doing the devil's work in keeping apart two beings who really
loved. If Miss Maury could have heard the now married Domingo and
Candida openly discussing her with the other servants in the leisure
generously allowed them all, as "the sour old cat", "the bag of
bones", and always pictorially consigning her to a place of flames
where she would "eternally fry", she would have collapsed in horror.
Elsie's morning walks to meet Domingo ceased, and she was easily able
to supervise the mails at home, without appearing to do so. The
waiting and listening torture was over; the cold pause whenever a
door was opened suddenly; the second's icy relief when, leaving her
still secure, it would close. While she continued to interpose
herself between Robert and the chance of the letter's arrival, she no
longer actively feared this.
Often now her murmuring song filled the house; from the big parlor
where the spinet was--a place kept in deep shadow with _jalousies_
closed the day long against the sun--it would steal through the
opened doors, across the _patio_, giving the impression of a
sweet-voiced spirit secluded in some twilit garden.
These were cloudless days. For the first time in her life Elsie was
truly happy. When her lips were not singing, the hidden choristers
in her soul whose music--choked all through childhood and made
halting in the Paris days from the discords of guilt--now rapturously
free, sang full-throated.
As was her way, her passionate heart with its bent toward
idealization gave Robert even more of worship than she dared express.
The feeling had the magic and blood strength that belong to all high
things of the soul as well as many heretofore unvalued, small and
individual reasons for loving him--for the slouching,
straight-shouldered ease of his long-limbed body whose grace was
curiously its own; the northern energy flashing through the brown of
his face where the eyes were like the deepest turquoises against it;
for his gentle yet subduing decisions; his warm, sharply interested
smile.
More than these she loved, as women will, and while it piqued her,
the sure knowledge that after the manner of ambitious men of mind,
there were times when she had nothing of him; times of every day when
she was only a shadow in his life, he all shrewd, absorbed action,
concerned with calculations in which, except as a distant background,
she had no part.
She accepted this, yet sometimes it brought questions: Had she become
indispensable to Robert? Could a woman ever mean such vital need to
a man like him so that however she disappointed his belief in her, he
would hold to her--for her sake let the hunger of the senses impinge
upon his code? How far in the white honesty of his nature would she
fall if he discovered her lie--ever knew that with defiance and
recklessness, another man had been her passionate lover for a long
time in one sense, and apparently in the final sense? Would this not
be decided for him imperiously, by something separate from his
inclination?
One day as they both sat by the table in the _patio_, the apricot of
late afternoon creeping under the huge umbrella that hid them from
the house, he writing, she embroidering, these doubts came as if the
shadow of some on-coming trouble, as yet veiled, had fallen with
suddenness upon her. She felt a shiver as she shrugged them off, put
down her work and went to Robert's side. As he continued bent over
the page, she forcibly tilted up his chin with one finger and looked
steadily into his eyes.
He had to wink a few times before his blue gaze quite cleared of his
reflections to take her in as she wished. When he did, he drew down
the hand showing pink and white against his coffee-colored fingers
with toil marks on them, bent it back, and after an amused study of
the satiny palm, pressed his lips deeply into it.
"I've never seen on a woman in all my life such a little paw. It's a
baby's!" He looked up to say this and kissed it again.
It went through him then how delicately youthful in type Elsie was.
She seemed a schoolgirl as she stood beside him, faintly smiling.
The day had been very hot, and she wore white cotton net as simply
made as a graduating frock, no color about her but the straw-colored
feathery hair and its tint repeated exactly in the sash that hung to
the skirt's hem.
She drew his arms tightly about her as she slipped to a seat on his
knee.
"Don't establish yourself permanently there," Robert frowned, a note
of laughter in the words, "as I must get on with this statement--"
"What is it?"
"An account for Olazaba about what I mean to do in regard to the
other half of the mine. He says I dodge him, evade the issue."
Robert's eyes gave a cold flash. "No one ever before said that of
me, and after these Venezuelans read this above my signature they
won't say it again."
Elsie's false steps and bruises in the whirlwind of life had made her
wise. Robert saw her give a keen almost alarmed look toward the
paper which he had been rapidly covering with his fine and forceful
writing.
"From what you told me yesterday, you are not agreeing to do what
they want."
"I am agreeing to speak of their proposition when I go to New York,
as one having no opinion about it, good or bad." He seized Elsie in
a boyish clutch. "Think of it!--in about two weeks more we'll be in
New York's springtime and out of this heat. Only for that I'd have
made you--obstinate little devil though you are--get away to Macuto
for the sea breeze."
Elsie did not reply to this, and he went on dreamily: "I've been
thinking of what you said of our going to France into war work of
some sort. A bully way to spend some of the money I've earned. You
couldn't nurse, of course--"
"Lots of other things to be done. And I'd scrub hospital floors--for
France! Then I keep thinking of my dear Julie," she went on, a pang
in her voice. "I must find her. It chills me not to have had one
line to all the letters I've sent her. If I could only hear that
she's alive.
"It's hard to get news from the wilderness and maelstrom that France
is now. One has to go--to know."
While Elsie was sincerely interested in this latest project her
attention was divided. Her gaze wavered around the papers on the
table.
"Robert," she said slowly, "don't write anything for these men. I
wish you wouldn't."
"But I'd rather. They've got to know just what to expect from me."
"Don't _write_ it," Elsie repeated, the advice with a shade of appeal
in it that puzzled him. "Something might be read into it that you
don't quite mean, or there might be a few words left in it that you'd
wish you hadn't said. From what you've told me, I feel sure you are
dealing with a desperate and determined lot of speculators. Any
signed agreement of yours might be turned and twisted into some
irritation for you that you never counted upon. Tear it up,
dearest?" she asked, bending toward the table, while in fancy she saw
all that had followed in her own life after the writing of a
regretted letter.
Robert looked as amused as if a white kitten with a ribbon about its
neck had opened its coral-pink mouth to give him counsel. "Then what
would you have me do?" he asked.
"I'll tell you," Elsie said with soft, clear force. "Olazaba comes
here to dinner to-morrow night, you say--"
"He didn't want to come--tried hard to get me to go to him in Puerto
Cabello where he's been stopping with some others of the clan. We
left it this way: If he did not hear from me that I would do that, he
was to come here. This is to be our final talk, for he sails almost
at once for a Chilean port and new copper fields there."
"And he was to leave, carrying all that writing signed by you!" she
cried, in a sort of exultant wrath. "Instead--why not talk to this
subtle, perhaps tricky Venezuelan--for I know you don't trust
him--and do it before a witness? _Me voilá!_" She pointed gaily to
herself while her face flushed to the opal-pink that lurks in the
core of a white rose.
"All right. But I've never known such a quietly dogged, tireless,
oily pleader. And he won't take positive defeat well. I've often
seen him looking at me with something very like a threat--as if,
providing I failed to meet his backers' wishes, he'd start some sort
of retaliation."
"That's the way with money-mad men," Elsie cried. "You have it in
your power to make a fortune pour into their hands. If because you
keep to the straight truth this does not happen--of course they'll
hate you." She bent across him and lifted the papers on which his
fountain pen lay. "Let me tear them up?" she begged.
"You've got me out of the mood for writing another word. So--go
ahead!"
As she obeyed, flinging the fragments into the basket, Robert
laughed. "You'll have more than you bargained for. The clap-trap of
printing presses at full speed is a trifle to Juan Olazaba when he
gets going."
Elsie touched her lips to his dark cheek in the lightest kiss and
leaned her elbow on his shoulder.
"I'm glad you let me help you," she whispered. "It's a lovely
feeling!"
He studied her whimsically, his glance brilliant, caressing.
"You bewilder me, Elsie," he sighed.
"That's better than boring you."
"You're new wine in the old bottle of my life, and you go to my head.
I'm afraid I'm getting uxorious."
"I've forgotten what that means, but it has a dreadful sound."
"Uxoriousness is love of a wife," said Robert, his brows up. "Or,
rather, too much love of a wife."
"That's impossible!" Elsie was imperial, blithe and dry. "No, that
couldn't be."
After a pause she asked with droll seriousness: "Do you love me as
well to-day as you did yesterday?"
"Better."
"But how could you? You said then you couldn't love me more."
"I was mistaken."
"And to-morrow--better still?"
"Without a doubt!"
"And this will never change?" she asked, sitting back a little, her
gaze amusedly astounded. "More and more love from you all the time?"
"More and more," he said with drowsy eyes and a clipped, low-noted
laugh, "until I am for the most part one big, human exclamation of
adoration for you, with every other feeling mere little futile dots
and dashes around it. So, if this is my state of mind
to-day--Wednesday--you can faintly imagine its intensity by Saturday!"
She bent to touch his cheek briefly with hers as she said: "You are
adorable. Only--it happens to be Thursday, you know."
At the words he straightened and held her off sharply. "This is
Wednesday!"
"No, it is not," she said, and ticked off on her fingers the various
happenings of the three days since Sunday.
"Good Heavens!" Robert lifted her lightly from his knee and stood up.
"Then Olazaba is coming to dinner to-night. Didn't I tell you that?"
She looked aghast after the manner of a good housekeeper taken by
surprise and clasped her small hands distractedly.
"Robert!--You said nothing about it at all until this morning, and
then only that he was coming to dinner to-morrow."
"I thought to-morrow Thursday, you see. This is the second time in a
month that I've got twisted this way and lost a day. It's about time
I took a rest."
"Oh, dear, what a mistake! What can we do?"
"Why, do with what we have," he said easily. "I'll make a corking
Moselle cup that will cover up all deficiencies."
"Nothing of the sort," Elsie retorted, hex fine brows quaintly
severe. "Our dinner to-night was to be of the simplest. I take a
pride in my house. I'll get Gil started on something more--oh, I
know!--his wonderful cheese _soufflé_ will help--and fortunately
there's lots of caviare.
"Splendid. Hurry it along, dear." Robert looked at his watch.
"There's not much time. Olazaba will be here in twenty minutes.
He'll be sure to wear a dinner jacket, so I must change. You
needn't. You're sweet as you are."
"Oh, indeed?" She looked up at him in gay commiseration of his need
of enlightenment, as she started off. "Not dress? Not put on that
silver tissue that's just come home?--as lovely as anything to be
found in Paris? Wait!" and she blew him a light kiss as she ran
toward the kitchen quarters, calling: "Gil! Domingo! _Venga V.
acá!_"
The time raced. Instead of twenty, it was scarcely fifteen minutes
later when Elsie heard Olazaba arriving at the front of the house and
Robert's voice from the entrance hall, greeting him.
Candida was fastening for her the last snaps of the ductile tissue
into which she had been rushed and in which she gave the effect of a
flexibly bending blade throwing off coruscations of moonlight, when
Robert stopped to thrust in his head between the gallery doors. He
had on a lounging coat and slippers.
"Olazaba's come. I went out only half ready to meet him. He's been
hit a bit by the sun and is in there sitting quietly with the
shutters closed. I gave him some aromatic ammonia, and he'll be all
right. I'll be along in five minutes. You go in when you're ready."
While speaking he was obviously conscious of the cold blaze from
Elsie's gown framing her curd-white flesh and glimmering head, her
darkly languid eyes making a splash of softness against all the
brightness.
"Jove," he murmured. "You're too--too wonderful, darling! Too
wonderful!" he sighed helplessly and went away.
"What did the _señor_ say about you, _señora_?" Candida asked with
her lovely simplicity, as she rose from her knees and stood away from
her mistress, her eyes absorbed, her delicate fingers lightly
interlaced.
"He said I was too wonderful," Elsie answered in Spanish, her lip
lifted in a gay smile.
"Ah, how the _señor_ knows all things!" Candida replied with an
august gravity. "The _señor_ is wise like God--and what he says is
always true."
Elsie gave joyous assent to this, and slightly drooping with
laughter, went from Candida's roundly solemn gaze into the hall. The
parlor was but a few steps away. It was a sedately stiff room, after
the Latin-American manner: A dozen rockers were ranged around the
walls; in the big central space there was a table with a chair on
each side of it; the spinet's white keyboard yawned from one corner.
All of this lay in deep shadow, as a balm against the lingering heat
of the western sun, except at one spot beside the table, where from
slightly parted _jalousies_ behind it thin rays crept in that made a
gridiron-like oblong of flickering gray upon the surrounding dusk.
And as Elsie made her radiant pause in the doorway, she saw a man
sitting on one of the central chairs, his head lowered, his arms
folded. She had floated out of the gloom, had reached the table
before he seemed aware of her entrance and rose slowly. His back was
toward what little light there was. As he stood up she had only
sense of length, slenderness, and of a mixed odor,--a scent sweeter
than any ever used by Anglo-Saxon men and the pungency of Spanish
tobacco.
"Señor Olazaba?" she said graciously.
He bowed low.
"My husband tells me you speak English. I am very glad--" Her
extended arm fell at sight of the fingers that came to meet hers. A
jaundiced brown they were, stained bistre at the tips from nicotine,
thin, strong, with tendons like cords at the knuckles, the nail on
the smallest a cruel-looking quill.
In all the world there could only be one hand like that!
An icy current of air seemed to close around Elsie; as if, against an
iron bar that had replaced her neck, she lifted her terrified face.
The man had turned sideways a little, and one of the pencil strokes
of light lay straight across a pair of sunken, oblique and glistening
eyes. The fox eyes of Serafin. They were upon her, an electric
force in them that locked her own, held her up, rigid before him,
when she felt she would have fallen.
CHAPTER XXXII
Imagination halted; grew stark. For an instant, through blankness
and darkness, Elsie was only aware of a disorganizing pang. This was
protest from mortal dread against the belief that it was actually
Serafin at whom she looked.
His voice carried reality to her. Thin of sound, metallic, rapid,
and a shade too high for a man, it brought to her inward sight, on a
rising and falling splash, all the happenings of the tragic night
where he had moved, the most sinister figure.
"Control yourself! Madame--do you hear me? Control yourself!"
As his face with swiftly moving lips darkened down upon her, Elsie
choked, holding by her fingers, and feebly, to the edge of the table.
Balance left her completely. Her mouth opened for a scream; it ended
abortively on a breath.
Joining the threat that intensified in his eyes, Serafin's hand
fastened on her bare arm--as it had before--oh, as it had before.
How she remembered! How exactly it repeated the repulsion felt then,
gave her flesh the same furred feeling as if from a worm moving over
her. This brought strength that made her recoil from it, jerk it off.
"Get hold of yourself, madame." And now his tone, small, succinct,
expressed the most dire need of her obedience. "We have only a
moment before your husband comes back. Do you hear me? He will be
with us in a moment--your husband!"
With sickness cold upon her, Elsie struggled to heed this warning.
Her nerves were stretched to their hardest.
"What is it? What?" she implored and dragged a hand across her wet
forehead. Growing a little stronger, though the words came weakly
still, as if she were at the end of an exhausting race: "Why--have
you come here?"
"You'll know all that, later. Just now get one thing clearly into
your mind, or you will regret it! When your husband returns, you are
not to let him know that you have ever seen me before. Remember!"
Strengthening still more, though her face was as a dead woman's,
Elsie fixed a steady gaze on him. "You're to keep--pretending--to be
some one you're not? And I'm to help you do it? That's what you
mean?"
"_You have never seen me before,_" Serafin repeated.
"No!" burst from her.
"What do you mean by 'no'?"
"I won't do this," was whispered through her teeth that shook a
little, piteously. "My husband thinks you're a man named Olazaba.
You're not--and I won't say that you are. I won't--"
"That is my name," he broke in on a crisp note. "You never supposed
that I had any other than Serafin--did you? Of course not! It's so
usual to forget that--servants--have family names. Is it not,
madame?" and the question was insensate resentment. "I am Juan
Serafin Olazaba. I was that in Paris. I was that in Spain. It is
my name."
"Posing as a Venezuelan," she said feebly.
"To your husband only. I thought it wise, fearing that if he
mentioned that I came from Spain and perhaps described me to you, you
might suspect. Except for him, every one that I know knows what I
am--a Basque!" The passionate nationalism of the diminished yet
persistently unconquered race flamed in the words. "Let all that
rest for the present," he continued even more hurriedly, "there is
only one thing we can decide at this moment."
While she could see he was listening, his eyes upon the door--not
upon her who, defiant, wretched, and astray in mind, swayed before
him--he continued in the unaccented recitative of the Spaniard when
speaking at length and in haste. It was a series of small hammer
taps that touched every needed spot of a spread surface, and they ran
around the circle of Elsie's intelligence with assurance and
emphasis, making plain every phase of the situation:
"Will you be silent about having known me before? I am not asking
from your husband anything that could possibly injure him. He
decides nothing to-night.--I did not want to come here. He has asked
me to do so over and over, and for weeks I have been evading
it.--While it is not by chance that I am here in Venezuela, as I will
later explain, I never wanted to see you again. I have no desire to
renew anything from the past--not the slightest desire to disturb
your life! It was necessary for me to accept Maury's invitation
to-night or antagonize him, lose what ground I have gained with him
in a perfectly straight business acquaintance. Of this I assure
you.--It is a misfortune that you hate me for what has already
occurred. I ask you to forget that. Treat me as a stranger--give me
my chance as a stranger, this one night. Do what you will
afterward--to-night I ask you to be silent. If you tell your
husband, I will be shown the door. What good will that do you? I am
not aiming to hurt him nor you. Consider what I say. It will be to
your advantage! I have something of the greatest importance to say
to you, but there is not time now. Keep quiet to-night. See me
to-morrow morning--for ten minutes--and I will explain."
She heard him to the end in silence. She wanted to be brave, she was
sick of deceit. Here was her chance to be defiant of consequences
for the sake of truth. If straightly and simply she unmasked
Serafin, no matter what resulted, it would be such clean and fitting
tribute to her love for Robert. And, moreover, what need had she of
subterfuge even to save herself? Serafin could not hurt her. He had
no proof that would convince her husband of her lie. She knew that
Robert would not let him speak against her,--would silence and
dismiss him. And if he managed to say enough to plant the need of
her explanation, later, what power would his word have against
hers,--if she denied his accusation?
By the time she had reached this question, a sick dismay came with
the knowledge that she was again relying on deceit, that an
unburdened heart and conscience still had no place in her scheme.
Helplessly, in that distraught moment, she accepted this as needful,
found exculpation for herself as something weak in the hands of a too
powerful fate and that had to use any weapon for salvation.
Besides, she so hated this man! He was loathsome to her. It was an
insatiate repulsion that could not help seizing any chance to trouble
or defeat him.
"My mind is made up," came from her on a hard sigh.
She felt strong now. Her eyes were black in her face that the
moment's shock had left wan.
There was a pause. Serafin gave her a probing glance.
"What do you mean?" His voice had thinned to a new desperation.
"Quickly, please!"
"I'll not let you pretend to be what you are not to my husband,--no,
not for one moment after he enters this room," she said steadily.
In the dusk that with little lingering was rushing toward the night,
the room had grown rapidly darker. Serafin went to the window near
him and peremptorily pulled the shutters open to their widest,
letting a deep grayness sweep in. He came back to face Elsie.
"Exactly--what will you tell him?" he insisted.
"He thinks you are a Venezuelan--a man of importance. He shall know
from me that I knew you in Paris--the Basque valet of the Marqués de
Burgos--"
"And that I knew you there, from the first sight of you," he broke
in, "as the mistress of the same man."
A sound of protest on a breath came from her, her look that of one
staggered. She seemed at first unable to speak. When she did, her
voice came with unexpected strength: "My mind is made up. You had
better leave before _Señor_ Maury comes. Nothing you can say--not
this last lie nor any other--can keep me from telling him who you
are."
"Nothing?" he asked.
His eyes narrowed so they fairly disappeared in the bony sockets.
And this very nullity of face became the more menacing; made it seem
to Elsie as if his spirit had, furtively, gone out of him to find and
bring back that which could not help but crush her; made of him
something less and more terrible than a man, however bad--something
unnatural, monstrously significant, that awoke dread in her for which
there were no words.
His eyes came back. Now he was listening with intense suspense for
Robert's step. While he was speaking he kept watch on the door: "You
are not afraid of me, then?"
"No, I am not." Her lips formed the words almost without sound.
Chill and luminous and tremulously fragile, she recalled to him a
rough yet luxurious room in the mountains, a dinner table with
candlelight through white--he even saw the gold of the dish of
apricots--and she there exultantly happy, with Don Arturo, the
passionate lover and suavely naughty aristocrat, beside her; he the
servant. The picture brought heat.
"I will say," Elsie rushed on, more clearly, "that you are attacking
me falsely because I resented your insult in Paris.--No one but you
knows that I was the only guest at El Miradero that night--or that I
was anything but a guest in the ordinary way. I shall deny all you
say."
"Deny?" His high brows crept up eerily into a point of surprise.
"But, your letter, madame? Your letter to your husband? _He_ knows.
Without what I should add as elaboration, you, yourself, wrote him
all the facts."
With his first question she saw her mistake. Incomprehensibly, she
had for a moment forgotten what had been lodged in her thoughts every
day for close to a year; had forgotten, too, what she had often
clearly realized--that if Serafin should cross her path she must make
him believe that the letter had reached Robert. It was not too late
to remedy her blunder. No! He must be made to feel that his
information was already discounted. She struggled to get back her
poise, spoke with an affectation of relief, her throat dry and stiff:
"Oh, yes, oh, yes--I--that--I'd forgotten--"
Far off a door closed. Far off she heard Robert speak with the
carrying sound that came to voices in the stone-enclosed _patio_.
"You'd better go--that way--there--through the front--before it's too
late," she implored in stumbling haste.
Nervous though Serafin must have been, his outward calm intensified.
"But I must have this clear. You forgot that your husband already
knew of your _affaire_ with the _marqués_. This is what you mean?"
"Yes!"
"And that he has forgiven you?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"This happened--_after_ he received the letter?"
"I told you so!" She swept him with a look of frantic rage.
"Marvellous," said Serafin thoughtfully. The one word, as he spoke
it, had a curious effect on Elsie. It was as if, on a wild run, she
had been brought up short, made suddenly aware of a gulf before her.
"Miraculous," he added with a note of laughter grim and sour, his
eyes brilliant. "That could not be, madame, unless the law in
physics is wrong and an object can occupy two places at one and the
same time."
While saying the last words, he whipped a flat black wallet from an
inside coat pocket. His strong yet delicate hand, so cruelly nailed,
drew from it a glazed wrapping. With a finical precision he lifted
this back, took out what reposed within, and held it up.
Elsie saw the keenly remembered gray-blue square of paper, stamped,
sealed. Her own letter,--fresh as at the moment of writing.
Though conscious that Robert was speaking again, and a little nearer,
she could only stare at it. It was a thing of doom; and doom was in
her stricken face.
"Look at this quickly, while there is a chance, _señora_," Serafin
said, and came closer to her, turning it slowly in his dark fingers,
his voice once more desperate. "You see your own writing--the
stamp--the De Burgos crest on the seal?--Exactly as you handed it to
me!--It was not given to Eduardo to take down the mountain. It did
not leave El Miradero. It never left my wallet. So--how could your
very estimable husband have read it, madame?"
In a flash he replaced it. Elsie stood inert. Everything within her
seemed to have dissolved to a rising flood, icy cold.
Robert's step was near.
"Will you be silent--until to-morrow?" she heard Serafin say.
Answering this with a slack nod, she went wildly to the branch of
candles in a corner and was lighting them when Robert entered, her
back to him.
As she heard his voice with its usual tone saying that she and his
visitor had had time to get well acquainted, a second self seemed to
come to her; a self of wisdom, advising, helping her. How she
managed a smooth, amused reply she could not tell; she had a sense of
wonder as she heard herself say the words. It was easier, then, to
add a murmur of excuse for going, and while keeping her face in
shadow, start across the spacious bareness.
Her knees felt sinking, so that she had to call on every nerve and
set her teeth to control them. She really made a natural progress,
but to herself she seemed to crawl over an interminable distance.
She was so small; the room so big; the door affrightingly far off.
And the feeling made her live again through a similar
experience,--when, playing at composure, as Arturo had implored her,
she had walked toward the curtains in the room at El Miradero, with
the implacable gaze of the pale stranger upon her.
At last she was outside, could let the trembling have its way with
her and send her, jolting, befogged, against the wall. Everything
grew dim. A moment passed so before she was able to take hold on her
will. Yet she could not stir, though her eyes were now open,
watching.
They were frantic like those of some small thing that stops
stock-still only because there is no place to run, every path blocked.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Courage may follow directly on despair; a deep, still recklessness
that counts out consequences. When results cannot, from any point of
view, be speculated upon for assistance, they lose force as hindrance
or threat. After the agony of the first moments of Elsie's
frustration, in which fear had been a swollen flood pouring into
every niche of her consciousness, an ebb came, and while leaving her
hopeless, it made her brave. As she stood before the mirror in her
room and pressed color back into her bloodless face, the wildness
went out of it.
She knew that she could make no bargain with Serafin. Even the
passing thought of such a possibility brought self-contempt. Her
chance of escape was gone. Her defeat was certain. Yet two purposes
pulled indomitably at her sad heart: For as long as might be to
prevent the letter from reaching Robert,--this as one would keep
creeping from the sweep of an advancing fire though knowing death,
ultimately, to be sure; and to prevent any further talk between him
and Serafin by which the Basque's adroitness might gain some helpful
concession.
During the dinner she was a surprise to the flickering, slanted eyes
that watched her. Serafin read her tense stillness as promise of her
immediate silence without giving him security. He was sharply
intuitive, and he felt her peace a waiting one. His hopes of money,
the only thing he loved in life and had most dire need of now, he
could feel tottering on the edge of this woman's deep-laid hatred of
him and one accompanying danger,--whether this would make her more
desperate than afraid.
The scene was lovely. The table, placed on the gallery that jutted
from the broad part of the house, stood in the center of a
grayish-mauve netting; stretched over a roof of bamboo sticks, this
enclosed the entire space and against it, from without, mosquitoes
hummed venomously and large spotted moths catapulted in vain. A
golden haze from lamps under straw-colored shades encircled the
chairs, in and out of which Domingo and another serving man, all
snowy white save their brown faces and oiled black hair, moved
soft-footed as ghosts. The darkness and solitude of the night were
suggested with lush softness through the veil as was the spark-blue
glory of big stars and the glinting of a sliver of moon that seemed a
lantern hung in a distant cedar. The fountain's fall stole in,
desultory, whimpering.
Serafin talked almost incessantly of war, politics, business,
dreading a pause that might lead to the danger he was combating, and
ate nervously; Robert, with a pleasant hunger, as he listened; Elsie,
while keeping a fork moving, tasted little, though she constantly
drank both wine and water to soothe the spasm that, like a spring
broken loose, would at odd moments close up her throat.
And as for the most part she sat looking down, though managing a
slack nod at times to Serafin's: "You agree with me, _señora_?" a
confounding realization came to her as it had before, of the
inviolable privacy of thought: There was no outward sign of Serafin's
suspense that must be churning about her, nothing of Robert's doubts
of his guest--only his desire to know him better--nothing of the many
things that, missing her surroundings during fitful seconds, she saw;
things not of this moment, or night, or indeed of this land at all;
instead, all the events that had followed her luckless entrance of
the mule coach that had taken her up the Spanish mountain with
Serafin,--the _deus ex machina_ who had planned disaster for her and
who was beside her now, seemingly her welcome guest. Yes, the
phantom-filled _hinterland_ of thought could be an awesome mystery.
Without visible life, how authoritatively alive it was!--the voices
from it a multitude's, yet only heard clandestinely by each;
immutably separate.
"Is it not so, madame?" Serafin's voice on a suave note broke again
on Elsie's absorption.
"You say 'madame' sometimes, instead of '_señora_'," Robert remarked
casually before she felt the need of answering. "You say it as a
Frenchman would."
"I have lived much in France," he nodded.
Robert looked at him in candid astonishment. "I had no idea of that.
I'd supposed you such a bred-in-the-bone product of this
Latin-America that it consumed all your energy, kept you rooted,
except for visits to the States. Like so many South Americans, have
you a certain pride in feeling that you are, if anything, an
improvement on your ancestry--on Spain?"
The crafty eyes met Elsie's dark, judging gaze and in the swiftest
way evaded it. A shade of hesitation was visible before he decided
that for him in her presence to be as honest as was possible, would
be the best policy.
"My ancestry in Spain is not remote; in fact it is here, in my very
own self. I am a Basque by birth," he said clearly, his chin
irresistibly lifting at the words.
Robert's interest intensified. "Ah!--now I understand the difference
between you and Rodriguez and Monsaldo that often confused me. I
detected it at times in your Spanish, badly as I speak the language.
But I supposed you Venezuelan. I thought you gave me to understand
that. No?--Odd that you did not tell me this interesting fact about
yourself before, Olazaba, in our many talks."
Serafin gave a dry smile and a shoulder twist, his hand spread
fan-wise and moving like a dark wing, first toward himself and then
toward Robert,--all of this a wordless exclamation at his own
incomprehension of himself.
"I touch very little on my personality, you see. I don't know
why--except--well, that we Basques are rather taciturn. We can talk
as volubly as the Spanish, to whom in one way we belong and in
another way feel separate from, but we do not open our hearts about
our intimacies in their childish way, once they are familiar with
you. As the rugged, silent Bretons are different from the rest of
mercurial France,--so we are different from Spain."
The moment for which Serafin waited came when at the close of the
dinner he told Robert that he was an enthusiastic lover of bridge.
"I hadn't thought of that," Robert said. "I'll send Domingo down the
road to see if the Morenos will come in for a rubber--no, as they are
rather ceremonious and a bit touchy, I'll run the car down and fetch
them myself."
Keeping to her resolve, Elsie had not left the men alone to talk over
cigars. With her own cigarette she had withdrawn to a long chair, a
little way from the table. While Serafin, smoking, strolled into the
_patio_, toward the fountain, Robert stopped beside her here, bent
over her.
"You've been very silent to-night, darling," he whispered; "and you
seem--sad. Aren't you well?"
"Oh, yes," she murmured, her eyes faltering, all of her sick with a
sense of doom, of herself rushing to some finality that was confused,
only the pain of it clear.
"You don't like my friend," Robert whispered with one of his scant,
droll smiles.
"Don't call him that!"
"You like him less than you thought you would?"
"Far less! He's--horrible," she said in a fierce whisper of pain.
"You're an unjust child. I found him attractive to-night. I think
the man's had a hard and interesting fight with life. And then--he's
a Basque! I was amazed. I've read a lot about that little-known
race--poor, but in their own estimation noble, and arrogant as the
devil. Now I'm sure it's this queer, Basque streak in
Olazaba--secretive, reticent--that has always kept me miles from
understanding him. The man might do--anything! He might surprise
with the most staggering extremes, either good or bad. That's my
feeling, somehow. Draw him out a bit while I'm away. I'll be back
in ten minutes."
As he said the last words he put his hand on hers. Elsie lifted it
and with a look of dumb love, kissed it. She wanted to say: "Don't
bring the people back. Keep strangers away to-night." But she knew
if she did he would not leave her, and there would be no chance for
conclusive words with Serafin.
This thought, as she watched Robert hurry away and immediately saw
Serafin coming back to her through the crossed shadows of the
_patio_, made her aware that deeply within her the hope she had
thought slain had lifted its head for a death struggle, and that it
had been revived by Robert's words about the mystery of the Basque
people: "The man might do--anything. He might surprise with the most
staggering extremes, either good or bad."
Cruel and unspeakably petty as Serafin had proved to her in the past,
she had never fathomed him and could not now,--only sure that he was
filled to the lips with some curious, twisted sort of pride belonging
to his race. With this thought went memory of the belief, often
heard, in the persistence of some idealism even in the most seemingly
irreclaimable criminals. Might there not be, then, woven with
baseness and inexplicability, an unconformable bit of honor lurking
in this enemy, something that in spite of her refusal of his appeal
might induce him to withhold his retaliation?
For as the decisive moment neared, disclosure a poised sword above
her, Elsie was filled with insurgent prayer--raw agony in it not
known before--for the destruction of the letter without Robert having
knowledge of it. Never had it seemed so dreadful; never so
ruthlessly cruel. That uncompromising relinquishment of him and the
passionate words that declared her love for Arturo were with her,
unwinding before her memory like the distortions of some grotesque
dream.
It would be one thing to tell him the truth--all the truth--of her
folly's transient life during a few hours of the June night that had
ended in a crash from the havoc of which she had crawled to find she
could hold on to the thread of his belief and so manage to live
again. Another and a hideous thing to have his eyes rest on the
actual words written then, their hot livingness changing her into the
woman who had set them down,--though she knew how briefly that woman
had lived, how thoroughly she had been the creation of self-delusion,
what regret went side by side with memory of her.
Serafin, in the swift, muted way, so remembered, came up the gallery
steps and while he drew back the panel of stiffened netting that gave
entrance as a door, she was holding to the hope that in the chemistry
of this strange man some drop of unalloyed justice would make her
suffering at his hands not the heaviest.
CHAPTER XXXIV
The light of enterprise was frankly in Serafin's eyes. Now that he
was alone with Elsie, her dread showed so plainly in her watch of
him, in the appealing yet frozen look across the space between them,
he felt a foretaste of accomplishment. Her spoken ratification--one
word--was the only thing needed to turn this to a settled content.
Having earlier seen her panic at sight of the letter that like a
relentless footstep, following, had at last overtaken her; and having
during the night studied the lovely peace and richness of her life,
grasped fully that her love for her husband was as deep as it was
tender, he could not believe that she would ultimately refuse to meet
his terms.
He said this in effect in his first guarded words when, after a look
about to see that the servants were not within hearing, he lighted a
fresh cigarette: "You are prepared to be sensible I am sure, madame.
You will not refuse the little I ask in order to gain for
yourself--so very much."
When he was about to seat himself the first discord in his scale of
values was struck. Elsie rose sharply from the long chair, and
coming to the table, stood there with that haunted, wavering gaze,
yet straight, her head well up. Words were not necessary for him to
understand the meaning of her action. He was intelligent and
sensitive and knew that she was repudiating the intimacy implied in
their association as hostess and guest that night. She was not to
talk to him as Olazaba; he was to her the Serafin she had known, and
as such she would not tolerate him seated familiarly in her presence.
The only way to prevent it was for herself to remain standing.
This opposition sent savage annoyance through him. He was to have a
hard struggle after all, and there was little time in which to manage
her. Besides he was tired, irritated about many things, while about
one--the immediate need of money to stave off ruin--he was ravaged at
times by a sadness that had the tooth of insanity.
"Let us sit down while we talk," he said, an angry thrust in the
clipped tone. "That will seem more--usual--if we are interrupted."
She remained as she was.
"To rush on without giving me a hearing," Serafin insisted, "is a
senseless thing. Let me explain how the position we find ourselves
in has come about--"
"What does that matter?" broke from her on a frantic note. "It
matters that it has happened--that's all! I am willing," her faint,
excited words hurried on, "to say nothing to my husband until you've
gone. As soon as you're out of the house I'll tell him that I knew
you, and where, and how. But although I do this--and I shall as
surely as I stand here!--are you fair enough to give me that letter
without any conditions attached to it?"
"But why?" Serafin demanded crisply, with a cool stare.
"Because it's mine! You stole it," came chokingly, "just as much as
if you were to put those spoons in your pocket. Are you clean
enough--man enough--to hand it over to me?"
His look changed to sly, feline amusement. "You know that you have
no more right to the letter than I have. Once you gave it to be
posted it passed out of your possession. It became your husband's.
In your heart you see how fair I really am, since it is to him I mean
to deliver it--that is, unless you give me what I want--_must
have!_--to make me keep it in my pocket to-night and, later on, hand
it over to you."
His eyes, constantly like banked fires that could send out unexpected
gleams, came to a steady blaze in the deep sockets. Curiously with
this his manner quieted. Dignified, vehement sentences came from his
closely folded lips:
"Madame, why should we clash this way? I want to hold you back from
rashness. All can be circumspectly arranged. You misinterpret how I
came to keep the letter. Let me make that clear to you and you will
surely see the whole matter differently."
He said this as an elder brother might. Elsie knew how quickly that
gravity could change to brutality. Every separate phase of the night
that had been her Gethsemane rose before her with sickening
distinctness. The memory brought one of those gusts of killing hate
that can come at extreme moments to the gentlest heart. To see him
was unbearable. She looked away.
"I've told you--" was all she could say.
While it was plain to her that she had spoken the words, they seemed
to travel to her from some other, over space and through a thickness.
With this queerness a draining, deathly feeling came as if the
material part of her were melting, as if she had become a sad shape
of mist that had to drop to a chair beside the table and feel its
support under her elusive arms. She kept her face turned from
Serafin. Her heaving gaze held for help to the picture of the night
beyond the gauze, though this was as unreal as herself; the dim
mountains, like wraiths awesomely watching the slanted rising moon,
were attached to a dream wheel on which the tilted world sank and
rose.
"We have only a few moments," reached her from Serafin on a rushing
tone, though guardedly hushed. "Please try to take in what I
say!--You think I held your letter back from the first to cause you
trouble, and that is why you will not be reasonable now.--This is not
so! I did it to save the _marqués_ from what I considered silly
madness on your part. I felt sure from what I knew of it that it was
one which later might be of great disadvantage to him.--You thought
the _affaire_ with him a most serious thing--one to endure
indefinitely. I knew this to be your folly. And I knew the
_marqués_ would bitterly repent of having in a moment of weakness for
you allowed you to send such a letter to your husband--one to be
proof for a divorce where he would be named as the cause--you see?
The devotion of my whole life had been his. And it was for his sake
I took it, madame; not to have a hold upon you that I might at some
time turn to my advantage. This is the truth!"
Elsie turned; she gave him a long, still look. El Miradero was so
resurrected by his words she almost seemed there, instead of in her
home with a long year of suspense and Arturo's grave between.
"It is not the truth," she said slowly with the unaccented smoothness
of coldest contempt.
His face grew fiercely dark; one of his fists doubled. "What do you
mean?"
"If you kept my letter for the reason you give, you'd have torn it
up. Or you'd have given it to me--later." A look of the most
desolate wistfulness deepened with her words. "You could have, you
know--so easily! In the commonest kindness you could have done this
soon after--when Arturo was dead. No," came somberly, wildly, "not a
trace of compunction from you! You kept it."
"Ah, now you have touched on other moods, other points of view--"
Domingo appeared here to remove the linen and what was left of the
silver, clearing the table for the cards. They had to pause, appear
tranquil as if he had interrupted only the usual desultory
after-dinner talk. When he had left them, Serafin gave a startled
look at his watch. More than ten minutes had gone. His eyes met
Elsie's and held them, an agony of eagerness in his.
"Scarcely any time is left, madame. Listen--please! Recall that
night at El Miradero. I kept the letter, meaning later on to earn
the _marqués's_ gratitude--it was to be an evidence of my fidelity.
That was my first intention. Fate put it out of my power.--Recall
the cruel shock his murder was to me!--Very well. This
grief--because where I love I am a violent man--became suddenly a
fearful rage against you who, already, I had little cause to like. I
believed you to blame for Don Arturo's death. I was sure he would
have kept away from the mountains that year had his unhappiness about
you not made him reckless, blind to danger. Thinking you had gone
back to America he went away to this solitude--to brood over his
failure with you. I felt that you had put the weapon into the hand
of the Fate waiting up there for him.--It was this that first made me
see the letter to your husband as something by which I might annoy
you--not seriously--keep you perplexed--you understand? And the more
so because your manner to me then, as always, made my blood boil.--It
was not until weeks later that this idea took on a serious side, when
I recalled clearly one very important thing--"
He stopped. An on-coming motor was pouring its resonant buzz over
the roofs from the street. He saw Elsie's fingers fasten on the edge
of the table, apprehension sharpen in her already rigid body and
face. When he went near the house door, his head up, he had the
stillness of an animal listening through every sense,--the fox he so
resembled, when the hunt for him is on.
As the sound remained continuous, faded, then died, Elsie's head sank
in relief, though her fingers, trembling, remained where they had
clung. She knew that Serafin had come back, was leaning over her,
his palms spread on the table. She winced from his nearness--the
rush of his breath, his loathsome sweetness made of perfume and
strong tobacco, the violent gaze that she could feel on her lowered
face matching the passionate, clearly separated words that followed:
"I told you as soon as I saw you that it was not a coincidence that
brought me to Venezuela, madame. It was not!--When I was in America,
years ago, I lived here. I had shares in the old Logrono mine that
failed. Therefore--after the _marqués_ was dead, and you were gone,
I saw you suddenly as a possible chance in my future--the letter as
an asset in my speculation. And the reason is this: that just a
little while before leaving for the mountains to join Don Arturo, I
had read in the Paris Herald that your husband, representing an
American company, was to go in the autumn to Venezuela to report on
the advisability of re-opening the old mine, or part of it, in which
my money had been sunk. As I came to think this over carefully I
felt sure that you and he would eventually meet and--as he had not
had the letter--almost without doubt resume your life together.
There was nothing holding me in Europe any more, nothing to keep me
from coming back to Venezuela and to the others who were in the old
deal with me. Once there I felt I might be able to turn this
American interest to our gain. 'And suppose,' I thought, 'I might
get the friendship of the wife of the American engineer as a help--if
I need her help?' So I reasoned. And at last what has happened came
about. We had to meet." Sorrow, a dark wave, went through Elsie
with his next words: "I had little hope, however, as I came to this
house to-night. If already you had told your husband about the
letter, it would not have been of the slightest advantage to me. You
see?"
Oh, yes, she saw. She answered him with a look, morbidly acute, and
with a sense of inner collapse. The difference to-night, had she
been truthful with Robert that day in the dingy hotel room in New
York!
"Well, madame? I have told you the facts. What is your answer?" He
stood away and felt desperation as he looked at her. Her earlier
fright had wholly disappeared. After that one, piercing look, she
seemed stone again, staring eternally into space. Sad through and
through; hopeless; past fear. "You know by my unwillingness to come
here that I tried to succeed without seeing you or using the letter
for persuasion. Indeed, I did not want to use it. Time had softened
me. And--you may not believe it!--I meant when all was well with me,
and you had left here, to send it to you with a line of explanation,
and so relieve your mind of it forever."
At these last words, the hope that, even yet, he might allow her to
escape, came wanly back to Elsie. The authority of need in her eyes,
she lifted them to him.
"Then give it to me now! Not as something for something--just
because you can be generous. You've said that folly made me write
it. I've known for months how great that folly was--why Arturo was
killed. I found out about Ascuncion and her father." His surprise
at this statement while sharp was brief, dismissed as unimportant
against the pressure of the moment. "So keep me from suffering for
my mistakes--more--than I can bear--"
"You but have to promise what I ask!" he cried, mad exasperation in
the tone while his voluble hands went wide and stiff in finality.
"Do that!"
"Never." This was dull and slow. Her eyes still besought him. "In
spite of this--give me my letter."
Serafin's long nose lengthened in ironic consideration of her. "You
must see that nothing could so please my pride as putting you under
this obligation to me. Alas, I cannot so indulge myself--you will
have to suffer because of your importance. We have a proverb in
Spain: "_A quien se hace de miel las moscas se lo comen._" That is;
"Smear yourself with honey and you will be devoured by flies." You
see? You are smeared with the honey that means prosperity for me--I
am a very hungry and determined fly. There you have my unchangeable
answer."
The words infuriated her. A flash of the wildness in her leaped up.
"Let me tell you that you are overestimating your chances with my
husband! Even if I said nothing of your real history, he would not
take a step to help your schemes. Not one! From his own judgment he
is not inclined to support you by so much as a finger!"
"Ah, but you are wrong," Serafin declared suavely. "When you left us
alone before dinner, _Señor_ Maury, in answer to my request, said he
saw no harm in my going with you both to New York. He will say
nothing--but is willing to present me to the men with whom he is
associated and give me a chance to outline my claims to them, myself."
CHAPTER XXXV
This brought Elsie to her feet. Red spots had started out on her
cheeks. Her mouth quivered like a child's in trouble.
"You managed that much," she said on a breath. "Instead of going on
to Chile--"
"I shall never go to Chile," he broke in with defiance and misery.
"The only thing--the thing that has to be--is New York! New York,
with influence to help me, is--_life_." His force suddenly
collapsed. He trembled. His hands made futile, imploring dashes
toward her. "You did not understand this--that I am facing ruin--or
you would not deliberately set out to destroy me. No, you would not
do that."
"Why not?" came with the stifled stillness that so often is the cup
for a storm.
"Because I have never injured you--as yet."
"Never injured me?" He felt the dark look impale him.
"What happened to distress you came from destiny--not my doing--not
my fault--"
"All your fault!" Her voice, controlled with difficulty, had the
thickness of a sob. "Didn't you persuade me to go to El Miradero
with you, knowing what I did not know--that I could not come down the
mountain till the next morning--that unless Mrs. Vrain came, I would
be alone there--all night--with Don Arturo? That was the
beginning.--You saw my agony at his death.--And at once didn't you
use me vilely?--Put me out when his people were coming--as if I
were--oh, what you called me afterward--and not fit to breathe the
same air with them! Didn't you make me feel vile--_lost_--when--you
kissed me--_You!_" she said on a long shudder. "Do you think I have,
or ever can, forget that?--Or what you said to me at the last--after
you had flung me out at daybreak--and made me go down that strange
mountain--alone--distracted--not fit to take care of myself?"
Wild tears came. She could not keep them back. Her face lost its
lines, went into a piteous muddle of pain. Holding to the chair's
back she shook as if a storm had entered her. Serafin had grown very
still. As Elsie by a violent effort steadied herself, her eyes,
though wet, saw clearly again, and watched in his tobacco-brown
throat, left long and bare above a low collar, two tendons jerk like
a pulley. While he was listening with every nerve, his eyes were
fixed as if on some one, or something, beyond her,--far beyond.
"You want my promise to keep your real history from my husband so
that through him you'll make money. That you'll not get." Her
breath was heavily uneven, her eyes jet-black in her now drained
face. "And yet, if you had a drop of humanity in you, you'd give me
the letter. I'll tell my husband the whole story--all that I should
have told him before. But that letter I don't want him to
_read_!--I'll die!--for something in my heart will die--if he ever
reads--those _words_! Oh, if you were the worst sort of an American,
you'd hand it over. No man of my race, no matter how low he might be
and though he had done all you've already done to me, would refuse
it!--You've talked of your pride.--You have no pride! None--if you
do this. No decency--if you do it. If you finish with me as you
say--ill-treat to the end a woman you've already treated so cruelly,
because she won't let you take away the last bit of her self-respect,
then with all your pride--your Basque pride of which I heard so much
even as far back as Paris--you're not _a man at all_! You're
something in the scrap heap. I can't name you. There is no name for
you--no place!"
In all her life Elsie had not been capable of a denunciation like
this. Expression in words had always been repressed with her. She
had blazed as never before. And when she had poured out in broken
frenzy all that had wounded and goaded her in memory, reaction came;
faintness. She tried to reach the opening in the netting that led to
the house, swayed beside a chair and sat down, bent over, her face in
her hands.
The silence seemed to her to have the heave of a profound sea, she a
cork on the waves. Through soundless turmoil one thought beat on
her: All that she wanted in life she was to lose in the next few
moments. Robert would come and for the last time would look at her
with the limpid, restful gaze belonging to love and faith. For the
last time and for just a breath, she would be the self of tenderness
and peace that in their reunion she had become. Then all would
change. The sun would go out upon her world, leaving her in the
dark, in the pulling and discarding sea where she seemed gasping now.
Yes, the sun would go out upon her world. It would crash into space.
Something soft, falling, fluttering first upon her head and then
brushing her propped arms, made her drop her hands from her eyes.
Still bent over, her glance moved downward. The strife within her
and the pressure of her convulsed fingers upon her lids had blurred
her sight to a haze of dancing colors, yet through it she saw what
was unbelievable: Her letter--the fresh, gray-blue square, face
upward, with Robert's name and New York address in her writing--lying
at her feet, against her skirt.
Her stare remained on it, refusing to take it in. She gave a jolting
look up at Serafin. He was changed. His arms were stiff, pressed
against his sides, the hands doubled into fists. Something that
evaded her was in his face, so dead, that a glaze seemed to have
crept over it,--just as she had often seen the roofs' red tiles take
on what seemed a cloak of cobwebs under the cold glamour of dawn.
While her eyes were held by him, she was overpoweringly conscious of
the letter within reach of her hand, yet could not stoop for it. The
something about him that had eluded her was changing to the
appalling. She felt the recoil that strikes warm blood at the sight
of sudden death.
"Yours. Pick it up." The words mild, cool, had the remotest
detachment in them. "I don't know why I've given it to you--" He
paused, turned his head slowly as if forced to look at some
passer-by, moved it in an uncertain way from side to side--blank
amazement in it, helplessness. "And yet--yet I do--yes, I do know"
... he said after a long pause, the tone without body; void and thin
as the crash of empty eggshells. "Pick it up."
She obeyed. When she felt her fingers close about the letter as they
had so often in her imaginings, and when she saw it in her grasp, the
chilling incomprehensibility of Serafin went away. Strength came, a
tingling fire. And the solid earth was back under her feet.
"I--I--!" She looked up to say something--she had no idea
what--something inarticulate, some wild sound of relief and
gratitude--and Serafin was not there.
He had vanished with the stealth and silence that had always
characterized him. No one else that she had ever known could have so
flashed away with no more sound than a shadow, although the panel of
netting on the house side resting unfastened against its bamboo jamb,
showed that he had crossed in front of her to leave in the ordinary
way.
Elsie started up, had taken a few steps toward this opening when the
small sound of the street door shutting carefully reached her. He
was gone, then. He was really gone,--out of the house, out of her
life. And the letter was hers!
Here it was in her hand. No, in her two hands, crushed between them
in a silent, racking sort of thanksgiving, pressed to her heart, to
her shaking lips. It was hers to destroy. Her many prayers were
answered. Robert would never read what had been for so long her
secret torment and through it suffer what she felt to be unbearable.
God had helped her. At the last moment He had softened her enemy's
enigmatic heart, poured His mercy upon her even through the medium
that had seemed all hardness and menace and hatred. This letter had
been the wake of fear following her for so long! It never would
again. No eye but hers would see those stabbing words now. Serafin
had gone, defeated; finished. He would appear in her life no more.
She suddenly stood very still, listening. The effort to hear was
projected so violently, all her muscles down to the tips of her
fingers took on the density of iron. She had the look of a bird that
through full-throated singing has heard the stealthy on-coming of a
cat in the branches and grows mute, yet too palsied by shock to stir.
If Serafin were gone, then who had again shut the street door? Who
was moving in the shadows,--and coming toward her now with sounds of
confusion and haste, yet without a word? The steps were not those of
the linen-soled servants. It was not Robert, or she would have heard
the gay, Spanish voices of his friends with him. It must mean that
Serafin had come back. He had only softened and surrendered
transiently. He was returning!
These thoughts fell from her as a heavy cloak, suddenly loosened,
drops from the shoulders. Beyond the screen, and in the soft light
of the nearer hall, Robert was outlined to her. He came quickly, his
head thrust forward in the alert way of one who having been awakened
by a puzzling sound, seeks its meaning. He pushed the frail door
open with an uneasy sharpness and stepped to where the yellow
lamplight shone fully on him,--showed his eyes riveted on her,
mystified, a rigid furrow pointing his brows.
"What happened?" he asked. The distressful picture Elsie made fitted
to what had already startled him and brought panic to his mind.
Her luminous hair, that had been loosened by the thrusts of her
distraught fingers, had slipped down and clung in wisps to her damp
cheeks and forehead. This was a frame for a terrifying pallor, the
wild, fumbling gaze of eyes grown slightly bloodshot, telling of some
agitation as yet unexplained.
She had stepped away from him, backward. The letter, crumpled into a
stiff strip, was held in both tense hands clasped before her. She
had the wish to answer, to arrange herself, to prepare him for what
she had to tell, but not the power. The sickness that earlier had
heaved over her returned, this time with ferocious force. As she
fought it, havoc within and without, Robert's voice kept reaching
her. Sometimes it sounded assailingly near--then far away. And when
the qualms that she resisted seemed to pull her under water, blind
and deaden her, she did not hear it at all.
Enough reached her to make her know that something--she did not
understand what--had prevented the Morenos from returning with him.
After a delay caused by his taking--some one--somewhere--he had
hurried home. He was bringing the car to a stop at the door when he
saw Olazaba come out--slip out in a curious way that had alarmed him.
They had met on the house path. Olazaba had pushed past him
violently:
"... looked queer--infuriated ... pain ... I rushed after and got
hold of him ... not a word ... got away ... a ghost--a madman!"...
Robert had come closer to Elsie, fiery anxiety in his eyes. She was
aware of this through a murk; knew that his hands were held out to
her; knew, too, that if she gave him her own the letter must go with
them. She could not stir; she tried to hold to him with her
desperate gaze, back of which the sickness was now like a giant
trying to throw her.
"You so silent all night--as if trouble ... something ... I felt,
seemed to know ... What happened after I left?--Elsie! My
God--_what_? ... Olazaba? ... Ill, dear?--You can't tell me now?"
The air seemed to crash on Elsie, take her down with it, as if she
had been standing in a house that had suddenly caved in. In the
_débâcle_ the letter left her hold. She felt it go. Robert had her
hands, her fingers, deathly cold, fastening on his like claws. In a
last effort at retrieval she tore them from him, crushed them, empty,
against her heart, put them out again to him--blindly now--for his
face had changed to a far, far speck--and the letter, lying on the
floor beside him, to a pale splash that grew and grew monstrously
until it rose to the height of a tidal wave and surged over
everything.
"No use, no use--" he heard her sigh, her sight going into eclipse
while fumbling, with saddest longing in it, for his face.
"Elsie--Elsie--!" came to her faintly,--the call over a mountain of
one coming to help.
She had sense that his arms swept around her, dragged her up. They
had seemed to come at the very last second to save her from unplumbed
blackness into which she had begun to fall.
CHAPTER XXXVI
On her bed, where Robert had placed her, Elsie lay, unconscious. His
strong fingers on her pulse could find no beat at first, then a very
faint fluttering. Her flesh was like damp marble to his touch. He
had hurried Domingo with the car to Valencia to bring back the best
doctor in the place; and Candida had come on a rush--silent, all eyes
and quiverings--to help him undress her beloved mistress.
As they lifted the unresponsive body, saw the loosened hair, a length
of silvery floss, flash backward like a flag in calm air, the face
sculptured in a look of weary negation--a terribly finished
look--Elsie's likeness to death drove a pang through Robert's heart,
seemed to take his eyes, leaving only hot rims around two spots of
mist.--Elsie dead? If Elsie should die! Elsie--dead? ...
When she was resting between the sheets, the stupor enduring against
all efforts to revive her, Robert left her with Candida. His step as
unsteady as a man's touched by liquor, he went out to the gallery
where they had dined. As soon as he passed through the screen door
the thought that had been holding with strength back of all his
trouble shot up into a question,--a driving one: What had taken place
on this spot during his absence? He faced some unintelligible,
confounding thing. There was Olazaba's sudden going; his surprising
repulse on their meeting; the dementia of his look when on being
overtaken he had torn away and darted into the darkness. Joining
this was Elsie's mute despair; the something she had seemed trying to
tell him; the sickness that had followed her dumb and pitiful
struggle as if agitation in a torrent had swept her down.
He was motionless on the spot where he had stood before, when his
eyes were caught by the folded piece of paper that had fallen from
her hands when he had taken them. What was it that she had held
so?--Would this explain?--Why had she not given it to him?--Had she
meant not to give it?--The pervading question had split to these
quick and short ones, hurtling one over the other in his mind, while
he had picked the small thing up, flattened it, thrust it under the
shade of one of the lamps to the full light, stared at it.
He could only stare. The longer he did this the more unreal what he
saw became. After a pause, during which he was conscious of a
feeling of suspension as if held in space on his own halted breath,
he turned the letter over, looked at the seal of solid wax with the
indent of a crest where the words "_lealdad ... amor de Dios ..._"
came out indistinctly, turned it again, and again studied the address
upon it.
Candida had come to his side. When she found it necessary to speak
to him twice before he heard her, her eyes had flashed in alarm from
the letter to his face:
"The doctor has come, _señor_. He is with the _señora_."
It was a little more than an hour later. After arousing Elsie from
insensibility, the doctor had strengthened her heart, and from this
she had lapsed into natural sleep. His smile and shrug on leaving as
he talked confidentially with Robert had been contented, approving:
"Nothing serious--nothing but what I tell you," he had said, with
suave pats on his patron's arm. "You will see that I am right in my
surmise. Scarcely any two women are alike under these circumstances.
There is frequently from the beginning a disposition to weakness like
this, particularly when as now--from what you say--something has
happened to unnerve, perhaps frighten--you understand? Quiet alone
is needed. Yet should you wish me to come in the morning, let me
know."
The big bedroom was as still as a church. Elsie slept with light,
soft breathing. Candida was under the netting, on a low seat beside
the bed; her arm rested on it; a fan was motionless in her limp hand
as she half-slumbered. The colored lantern suspended on a chain from
the dimness of the ribbed ceiling was the only light. Most of the
place was in shadow.
Like the sweep of small, brown wings, Elsie's lids came up. A
wavering look about, and they closed again in the sensuously grateful
way that belongs to the coming of desired sleep. This lasted a few
seconds, and the eyes opened, this time sharply, and remained fixed.
She rose with careful quiet to her elbow. Peering dread through the
curtains which showed her the empty room changed to manifest relief,
and she looked at the _mestizo's_ drooped head.
There was a hushed "Candida!" and the girl felt cold fingers brush
her wrist.
"_Señora!_" She sprang up with her sweeping grace, took the
expectant hand and waited, her face bright with inquiring tenderness.
"Where is the--?" Elsie began, and paused with fluttering throat.
"The _señor_? He is in his own room, dear _señora_. He said I must
tell him when you awakened."
"Don't tell him!" came with a clutch on Candida's fingers. Elsie
fell back on the pillows. "I remember the doctor.--Was the _señor_
here, then--all the time? Come closer. Tell me how the _señor_
seemed--what he said?"
Candida knelt beside the pillow, all willing secrecy. "The _señor_
was here part of the time. When the doctor left, he came back. He
seemed sad, _señora_, but glad to see you sleeping, and he went
away--oh, taking much care to make no sound."
She saw Elsie tremble. The next words were very faint, of prodding
earnestness: "Go out to the gallery, Candida. Look on the floor for
a letter--close to the table--a small letter--"
"It's not there, dear _señora_--"
"You know! You have it!" came with joy.
"No--" She broke off, almost silenced by the dread in the unmoving
eyes. "The _señor_ must have found it, because when I went out there
to say that the doctor had come, it was already in his hand."
The rigid eyes seemed to say: "Go on. What else?"
"He was turning it around, looking at the envelope as if he did not
understand it, _señora_. When I told him the doctor was here, he
came in with me."
There was a pause, then a heavy question: "Was that long ago?"
"At about half-past ten, _señora_. It is nearly twelve now."
Elsie sank into profound stillness. There was nothing more to be
said or learned. Robert had the letter. Without a word from her
ahead of that disclosure--one word to soften it and help her with
him--he had read what she had come to view as abominable. Lines from
it seemed to split into black grimacing atoms before her: "... I
could not keep faith with you ... I would endure any hardships for
his sake ... I am in love--madly in love!" ... Following this she had
a picture of Robert, at that moment, in his room. The letter was at
his feet. He had dropped it there as one would something that was
soiled, or that scorched the fingers. He was facing what he believed
was her real self, deceitfully hidden from him. The thought was
tearing him that she had been to Arturo all that a woman could be to
a man. Tearing him, too, and humiliating him was the conclusion
that, instead of love, world wisdom and self-interest had brought her
back to him.
A dislocating sort of suffering sent heat over Elsie's brain. She
could not face what was ahead of her. The determination to escape it
took on a rocklike strength--not to see Robert again; not to plead;
not to fight. Nothing could ever be as it had been. There was
nothing left of their life together but torn ends and blots,--only
things for which to be sorry. The letter had done this, as she had
for so long dreaded. The blazing words, extolling a delirium
believed in when written as the invincible truth, had blotted and
scorched the thought of her to Robert, forever.
As she flung back the bedclothes and the cloud of netting, she was a
little wild. Yet standing up straight in her nightgown she looked
much like a human lily, swaying on its long stalk.
"Get my clothes," she directed on an uneven breath and began to twist
up her hair.
She made it plain as well as she could--for the Spanish kept slipping
from her hurried need of it--that she was going to leave the house
quietly at once and get to Valencia. In the morning she would take
an early train to Caracas and then the first boat from La Guaira to
the States. She did not want the _señor_ to know. She would manage
to hide somewhere in Valencia.
"_Señora_!" The girl's eyes, widening in a paling face, had the
effect of splashes of black ink. "You must not go!" came from her on
a cry of warning. "_Dios_--no! What would happen to you far away
from this house and from your husband when your trouble comes upon
you?"
Elsie's shoulders gave a sharp twist upward. "What do you mean?"
"The child--_señora_. Ah, when the doctor told me and said I must
take good care of you, I was so happy. And you--you?--you are _not_
happy?"
For Elsie's arms had dropped. With taut brows and mouth fallen she
stood inert in Candida's embrace.
"Oh," came from her, almost without sound, and then faint and
dragging: "Oh--oh, no!"
The girl's heart grew very sad. What she had felt would be a
crowning argument for steadfastness and security had failed. Her
mistress, with a new sort of strength and a dangerous quiet, had
pushed her away and begun to dress.
Very soon afterwards Candida was beating a faint tattoo with her
nails on Robert's door. It was quickly opened. Her master had
changed from his dinner jacket to a loosely open corduroy house coat,
though otherwise dressed as he had been. The room beyond him, hazy
with tobacco, was brightly lit. She could see that his eyes, whose
blueness she admired, had the look often noticed on the faces of
peddlers, when fagged from body-racking trudges over the mountains,
they would drop to rest in a shady part of the servants' courtyard.
"Go to the _señora_, please," she prayed. "She seems a little out of
her head!--She has sent me to get out her car--and steal away with
her to Valencia--to-night, señor. And after that she is to get to
the coast, to some boat.--Oh, go to her--but do not say I told
you--or my dear _señora_ will be angry with me!" With this desolate
finish and big sobs, Candida flung her apron over her face and swayed
off hopelessly toward her own quarters.
Elsie was sitting on the edge of the bed when, after a touch upon the
glass panels, Robert stepped in. She was tense, her hands clasped
and pressed down hard between her knees. She had heard his step,
seen his shadow on the panes, and she was the image of fear. There
was, too, something almost grotesquely ineffectual about her awed and
watching face surmounted by the traveling turban and veil, much as if
a staring doll, bent and placed at a right angle, were trying to be
the miracle of a woman.
She did not stir while Robert sat down beside her, treating her
exactly as he would a sick child whose fancies were freakish. She
heard him say he had seen Candida scurrying along the hall and had
come in, hoping to find her awake. After one look at him she turned
her head away sharply. She could not understand his repose and
tenderness; they added confusion to her trouble. In body she
remained like an automaton, let him take off her hat, lift her stiff
hands and gently draw off the gloves, finger by finger, but when he
would have kissed her cheek, her uneasy heart made her flinch as if
he had tried to strike her. She sprang up. A despairing declaration
was in her look as it wavered over him, and it burst from her in a
wrung, unwilling way:
"You found--and read--my letter to you."
"I haven't read it, Elsie," Robert said,--a rational, quieting tone.
"Not yet."
Her throat filled. Her hand went up to it. "Why?" she stammered.
"Well, I felt that you didn't want me to read it. Instinct, I
suppose. And you didn't?"
"No!"
"Ah, I was sure of that. Come here, Elsie."
He made her sit in an armchair and sat facing her, bending forward in
a familiar way. His face was pale and very tired, destitute of every
active emotion. And yet its deep calm came to Elsie as sorrow in a
prophetic way; it was as if stillness had suddenly fallen on a stone
place that had just been filled with outcry and tumult. The roar had
been in herself. And this peace from Robert in which she could rest,
get breath, and think, would hold only briefly. It was there because
he had not read the letter--not yet; because they were still as they
had been. A longing shot through her. If she could hold that moment
stationary, forever!
"You had a shock of some sort to-night," Robert said, as she sat
back, her eyes closed, listening with steady prescience of pain ahead
to every clear word, "and you're still very weak, my darling. Now I
don't want you to talk at all--no explanation to distress you. You
are to listen to _me_. And after that you're to go to bed again and
try to sleep."
She could feel him bend a little nearer, but he did not touch her
fingers that were close to him, clasped about the thin bamboo arm of
the chair.
"I'm going to tell you my impressions about what I feel is troubling
you.--When I picked up the paper that fell from your hand as you
fainted and found it a letter written by you to me, with a Spanish
stamp on it and sealed with a Spanish crest, I was astounded. I'd
have opened it on impulse, I'm quite sure, if I'd not been called
away to see Doctor De Lima, who was with you. Well," the voice
throbbed on reflectively, "all the while he was here I'd been piecing
things about it together in the back of my mind. First I realized
that you must have written it last summer, as that was the only time
you'd been in Spain, and from the crest no doubt in the house you
were visiting there--El Miradero, the place that my letter went to
and that you told me you'd never received. When I felt sure of this,
the memory dug in that you had gone there directly after our
unsatisfactory meeting in Paris. And then--" After a pause he spoke
with slow emphasis: "--then, of course, I remembered that in New
York, last September, you told me that you had not written to me--not
once--after leaving me."
Glancing at him, Elsie saw that he had propped his head on his hands,
the fingers outspread and further ruffling the rippling hair.
"The mind is a mine of many crisscross veins, Elsie. One deduction
after another can strike on them like spades, disclosing them. It
became obvious that you had some strong reason for telling me a
falsehood in New York. You _had_ written me from Spain--and here was
the letter in my hand! ... After this I recalled a number of things.
They came in a jumble--most clearly things Selena had complained of
when we first came to El Iris, of your secretly watching the mails
ahead of any one else, to get letters for yourself. Was it, instead,
I asked myself, this letter of your own to me that you had tried to
intercept? Each time the question came I felt more surely that the
answer was 'yes.' Was I right in thinking this?" he asked, as he
looked up.
Without meeting his eyes, and pale-lipped, she nodded an affirmative.
"Then of course you must have believed it had been mailed. Also, of
course, your attempts to intercept it could only mean that you did
not want me ever to know of it." He gave a sigh here. "Things got
very muddled after that. How did the letter get into your possession
to-night, without having come through the mail? _Where had it come
from_? This thought brought me up, face front, to the thought of
Olazaba. What had he to do with the whole business? And what about
several things that had vaguely puzzled me from the moment of his
arrival here--your sadness and silence all the evening; his admission
for the first time that he was a Basque; the way he ran from this
house before my return, and with the look of a man chased by the
furies? The meaning of it all--this old letter from Spain--this man,
a native of Spain--and all the rest?"
He bent over and put his hands on Elsie's arms. She did not respond.
When, instead, she drew away and a look of panic scudded over her
shrouded face, Robert's heart contracted.
"Elsie," he cried out, "you are not afraid of me! Why don't you look
at me? How much of what I've reasoned out is true, dear? What had
Olazaba to do with this letter?--or had he anything to with it?"
Her eyes, dark and weary, faltered before his as she forced her stiff
lips to speech: "Yes, he brought it."
"Brought it?" Robert demanded. "Where did he get it? How--?"
"He stole it--long ago--the night I wrote it--"
"In Spain!" Robert exclaimed, as she paused.
"At the Marqués de Burgos's house--last June." She drew in a long
breath. "It was given to him to be posted. Instead, he kept it. He
was a valet--there."
"Olazaba!"
"Yes, he was Don Arturo's foster brother, and he was also--as
needed--his confidential man, courier, valet, butler, or cook. He
attended to everything for his employer. Juan Serafin Olazaba.
That's his name. I only knew him as Serafin until he came to-night."
In the silence that followed each felt illimitable emptiness,
loneliness. The earth seemed to have grown very still and they
suddenly miles apart.
"I see."
Robert's dull and wandering tone was at sharp variance with the
words, though he asked no question, and sat back with the look of one
who is willing to wait. He could not understand the sudden
despondency that went over him at the picture Elsie's words
conveyed--his wife's letter going into the hands of a Spanish valet
in Spain, and that valet the man known to him here for months as a
Venezuelan speculator. Nor could he tell why with the same shadowy
sort of pain, the Marqués de Burgos, his employer, who was also Don
Arturo, the friend of his wife, should for the first time emerge from
the cloudland of non-acquaintance and become significant as a man;
cease to be only a name as heretofore.
Something of this was showing in his face when Elsie started up with
the fling of the head that tells of the unbearable. She walked
quickly into the shadows and came back to look down at him. Her gaze
with bitter resolution in it bathed him before she spoke:
"Robert," and the tone suggested a missile flung from a distance by
wild hands, "I want you to sit there and let me walk about--as I
talk. I can't be still! If I keep walking--and thinking--and I
don't _see_ you--I can tell you--what I have to tell you!"
Robert had conquered his incomprehensible foreboding. Fancies had
transient life in the clarity of his mind.
"Is it," he smiled, "as bad as that? I don't think it is, Elsie.
What more you have to say can wait until morning, when you're
stronger after a good sleep. This is what I wish."
"I shall never sleep until I've told you."
"In the morning--"
"I'll tell you now!"
"But you've already explained the only thing that upset me--Olazaba's
part in this trouble to-night," he urged. "The rest--all about the
letter--I know. No need of another word from you."
"Know?--how can you? You said you hadn't read it!"
"I haven't. I meant to give it to you as soon as I saw you. I will
in a moment. It's in my dinner coat. Ah, Elsie--!" and the broken
phrase of comprehensive love had the sun in it.
She had flung out one hand excitedly. He had taken it and was
holding it with warmth and strength, so cosily, so carefully, he
seemed drawing into a sheltering embrace all her sad and shaken self.
His next words swept clean away this flickering rapture--made her
change before her inner knowledge into something small and
contemptible, sick, cold and guilty.
"I can see the salient things, dear--through feeling. See if I'm not
right!--When you got to Spain you wrote me a letter in which you
poured out all that was in your dissatisfied heart--dwelt on the
disillusionment you had felt during that miserable meeting in Paris.
You said you were not happy. You reproached me. Perhaps you said
you were not coming home--for I remember that in New York you told me
you had not meant to come back, and that except for the war you would
not have come. This letter, born of an unhappy mood, maybe bitter in
its reproaches, you thought was mailed. And by and by you were sorry
you'd written it. You regretted it so much that when, in New York,
you found it had not reached me, you determined it never should.
Isn't that it? And do you suppose if I read it," came glowingly, "it
could have mattered--now? Though you wrote it, you loved me!
Probably you wrote it, hurt and angry, only _because_ you loved me.
Ah, dearest! Never think of it again!"
Elsie's eyes were wet as she drew her hand slowly from him. She was
saying good-by to the trust that was in his gaze--that was to go and
never come back.
"It isn't like that. Oh, I wish it were!" The most desolate longing
was in her voice that seemed a small thing and far away. "It's a
different story you're going to hear, Robert. Oh, let me tell you
from the very beginning--please!--for that's the only way you'll be
able to understand at all!"
CHAPTER XXXVII
Serafin's progress was that of a rapidly moving shadow against deeper
shadows. He went in his swift light way, seeming to be hurried
without any will of his own,--in the grip of the Fate in which he
believed and with nothing in himself by which he could oppose it or
struggle from it.
He was headed for the hotel in Valencia where that morning he had put
up, yet felt no surety of reaching it; felt instead that he would
have to pause when so directed by the power driving him on, even
though it were on the roadside to lie like a vagrant in the ditch.
Serafin had had moments like this before in his life. Under the flow
of smooth and usual conditions he had been clear-sighted and had held
to arranged plans with the precision of a machine,--one moving
consciously to the value of money. For the possession of it had
always been to him a cogent reason for self-respect; the lack of it a
descent into a pitying sort of self-contempt. After the failure of
the Logrono mine, years before, he had been reduced, as now, to the
feeling of having become a human rag, yet--since Arturo, Marqués de
Burgos, lived--a rag that might be found efficient to the one being
who had meant to him even more than self. And he had proved this
true. He had gone back to Paris to the man he loved and had felt his
need like the tug of hands upon him, so that by degrees he had again
become a factor in living, though humbled in personal ambition.
It was different now. No place awaited him. No tug of hands drew
him on. Instead,--a new name had been added to those on an ancient
tomb in Spain.
Sensitive, confused, filled with a wish to reach a quiet spot where
he might settle accounts with his soul, Serafin rushed on.
The lights of the town were showing in the distance, a sparkling
haze, when he became aware of other lights, dim ones, near-by, and
realized that he had reached a familiar spot. This was a roadside
_fonda_, painted the harsh, medium-toned blue so loved of Spain. An
electric light in the front garden showed the color plainly and the
stiff-capitalled sign over the doorway: "_Los Dos Hermanos_."
The sight was like a friend coming to him with a familiar hooking of
the arm. Serafin knew this little _fonda_ of "The Two Brothers"
well. During his previous life in the neighborhood he had made it a
sort of half-way house for coffee; sometimes for green-milk
cocoanuts; sometimes for _guarapo_,--the raw sugar and water with
_aguardiente_. He recalled an old waiter, name Mateo, inclined to be
talkative, and who used to come forward in a shambling, gracious way
to serve him. He had a sagging throat, sad, dark eyes and always, no
matter how hot the weather, had worn an old, swallow-tailed coat too
large for him, evidently a second-hand gift from some portly patron.
Of course he was gone, probably dead--No!--there he was.
For Serafin had crossed the garden and was at the open door of the
_fonda_, though not conscious of clear intention to enter it; and the
old waiter who had been placing one bared table on top of another in
a corner because it was almost closing time, had turned, was coming
toward him in the remembered shambling and gracious way.
"It is too late, perhaps?" Serafin asked.
"It is never too late, _señor_," the old man crooned, "if there is a
customer."
Serafin sat at a table near the door, one not yet divested of its
cloth and facing the dark-blue shining of the night. He took off his
Panama hat and passed his hands over his face that was hot and damp.
"I'll have some brandy--and coffee."
"Do you wish the coffee in a glass, and black, _señor_? Or with
milk?"
"Black and very strong," he said.
As he spoke he turned his face to the waiter. The old man with the
habitual, self-effacing smile that had become a label, paused as he
was about to turn away.
"Do you remember me, Mateo?" Serafin asked.
And after a thoughtful look into the stranger's eyes--such odd,
oblique eyes; so hollowed, driven, sad--the waiter nodded. "Surely
you are the gentleman who years ago--five, six--I do not know, they
go so fast," he purred, "used to come here so often? Did you not
tell me you were from the Basque country, _señor_? Oh, yes, I do
remember you--well."
"_Buéno_! It is nice to be remembered," Serafin said, "but when I
entered I had no idea you would be here--and the same, indeed the
very same. To be truthful, you were old then--but you are no older
now. I congratulate you, Mateo."
"Many thanks, excellent _señor_. I am much the same. A door on
broken hinges can hang long, it is said."
Left to himself, Serafin sat over the table in a crumpled way and
scarcely moved until Mateo returned with a tray bearing glasses small
and large and a plate with one of the huge, thin _cassava_ cakes of
the country. Even then, his air was so absent the old waiter, used
to acting on whatever hints a patron's manner conveyed, drew away
from him without a word and took a seat in a remote corner until the
repast would be finished. He was very tired and hoped he might be
able to close the _fonda_ soon,--so tired, that as the stillness in
the place continued he dozed without intention.
When he came out of the slumber and shook himself, giving a glance of
alarm about, he saw the latecomer still at the table, in exactly the
same position. A glance at the clock showed that a full hour had
passed, the striking of eleven no doubt having been the sound that
had awakened him.
He went toward Serafin, standing subserviently at one side where he
could see the table. The glasses were emptied; at least twenty brown
cigarette ends lay on a saucer; and the tray was strewn with what had
been the cassava cake--crumbled to fine powder by the greenish-brown
fingers that still crushed it.
Mateo deliberately coughed. The man paid no attention to him. He
seemed obsessed in expending on the crumbs some fierce desire working
in him to break or assault. The fingers kept grinding the bread
particles that were already dust, after which they brushed it into
small separate mounds, swept these all together, scattered this
again, and were once more beginning on the separating and heaping
when the waiter ventured nearer.
"If you do not wish anything more, _señor_--it is very late," he said.
Serafin's hand grew still but he gave no other evidence of having
heard.
"The owner will not like my keeping the _fonda_ open as late as
this--" he had begun again, when Serafin turned to him. Mateo
stepped back, chilled. The face he could not take his eyes from
scarcely seemed the one seen before, so changed was it in some
confounding way; the parchment-like skin, tightened on the cheek
bones, had a waxen glitter; the upward slanted eyes, blinking as from
pain, were violently bloodshot.
"Have you been sick, _señor_?" broke from the waiter. "You look--"
He stopped as a galled sort of humor showed around the close-set lips.
"I have merely been thinking," Serafin replied almost curtly. "Yet
you are right--I am sick. You never have such thoughts, I
suppose--the sort," he said fiercely, "that makes your soul--retch?
Eh?"
"No, _señor_," the old man whispered, and drew away a little, as from
something repulsive.
"You are lucky," was Serafin's dry answer. "Well--what do I owe you?"
The sum was named; a small one. Mateo looked hopelessly at the size
of the banknote that Serafin pushed toward him. "I could not get
change for that, _señor_, without disturbing the owner, who has gone
to bed."
"You need not disturb him. To-morrow pay him out of it for what I've
had. What is left, keep for yourself. And--here's another."
"_Señor_--so much!"
Serafin had risen. He drew out a suede coin purse and emptied it on
the table of all it contained; shook it to be sure that nothing was
left. "This is yours, too--now you have all, to the last _peseta_."
The waiter was looking into the hollow, thirsting eyes with open
alarm.
"You have use for the money, haven't you?" Serafin demanded
impatiently, his gaze grimly upon the soiled celluloid collar and
shirt front.
"Oh, _si, _señor__----but--why?"
"Good, then--for I have not!" came quickly in answer, with a
simplicity that was conclusive, as he picked up his hat. His tall,
thin body, stiffly erect, he went with an impressive directness from
the room into the darkness.
Mateo remained inept and unhappy. Anything that varied from the
day's routine had a tendency to addle his spongy brain. Here was
something very different. And he did not like it. The stranger's
eyes, congested with blood and in the stillness of his livid face,
the heap of flour dust on the tray evidence of an impulse to freakish
disorder, the money given him--a larger sum than he had ever seen at
one time before--the last words: "You have use for the money--I have
not!"--he liked none of these.
Without touching anything on the table, he shuffled timidly to the
open door, expecting to make out, perhaps, the figure of the
unsettling visitor on the road and headed for the town. When,
instead, he saw him going up a near path and then, as one familiar
with the place, open the gate that led into the large garden running
from the side of the house to the back, his earlier disquiet returned
with force.
Few people were privileged to enter the garden that it was Mateo's
duty to keep locked because of its money value from the owner's
collection of animals and birds. These were in cages at distances
among the trees: specimens of the black, thumbless, spider
monkey,--gorgeous beasts with black back, white cheeks and a band of
reddish-yellow across the forehead; a jaguar with rosette-like spots,
and a tawny puma; aviaries among the vine-hung trees filled with
beautifully-colored _cassiques_ with their hanging nests, starlings,
scarlet _tanagers_, gay _manikens_, bell birds, many parrakeets and
macaws colored like equatorial sunsets. Few even knew of the gate,
as it was fashioned to seem a part of the high railing. This man, of
course, remembered it from his previous acquaintance. If he should
walk about there and awaken the birds and beasts in their cages, the
noise on the night might disturb the owner!
With the slack surrender to events that characterizes the very old
when the day has been overlong and a weight on the tired heart, Mateo
made a renunciatory gesture, picked up the money with hands that
shook as if working under a current of electricity, finished settling
the place, put out the lights, and shuffled to his own room under the
eaves.
But as he took off the stale, daytime clothes, he could not resist
looking from the window that gave on the garden at the back. It did
not promise him contentment to make out in the starlight the thin,
sloping shoulders of the unwelcome one, and that he was seated on one
of the central benches, his head bowed in a contemplation that
suggested permanence.
"_Santisima_ Maria, he will stay there till morning--be seen--and I
will be blamed for not locking the gate!"
In a flurry of helpless dismay Mateo crossed himself, crept into his
cot bed and drew the quilt over his head.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
Serafin, as motionless as one of the trees about him, saw nothing of
the garden while seeing much of other things. Over and over the
pyramidal events of the night kept climbing before him: First, his
joy on finding that Maury's wife was with her husband under false
pretenses, having relied on the letter failing to reach him. How
keenly and revivingly had this fact come to him as the bridge to
success through Maury's favor,--a bridge to be builded on the wife's
need of consideration from the man who had the letter and who would
not give it up to her until he stood securely in the lush pasture of
the promised land to which the bridge was to lead.
Blackmail?--The word leaped into his thoughts; an ugly thing and new
to him. He sneered at his innate shrinking from it. What matter?
Had it been successful, how easily the milk and honey of satisfied
money-lust would have removed its bitter taste.
But he had failed. After all his shrewd planning--failed! As
realization of this drove like the blows of a handspike through the
foundation of his revery, he lifted his head and looked straight
before him with the fatuous, incredulous questioning that had shown
in his face during Elsie's denunciation of him. He had found it
impossible to carry out his intention, not because of what she had
said; no, not in the least. His war with life had hardened his
spirit so that in most issues it had the comfortable callousness of a
shell. Her raging accusation had passed over him without
penetrating; dismissed as he listened. Not so the something that had
come out of her words--separate from her--that had first unsettled
and then defeated him. He had no name for the experience except one
that his reason denied, even mocked,--the entrance of a spiritual
force into the struggle between them, and on her side,--for although
from instinctive, unshakable reverence he frequently observed the
outer forms of his religion, he had been a sceptic for many years,
had believed himself no different from the animals that, while their
hearts beat, lived, and when they ceased to beat, died forever.
And yet, this overwhelming thing, to-night!
He sat with disturbed brows, steeped in the gentle silence through
which the stars watched, and tried to remember it all. There had
been no misty apparition from the Unknown, nor had his ears in the
natural way heard any one speak save Maury's wife and himself. Still
Don Arturo had been there--had owned him, bent him, made him obey.
"_Cease torturing her. Give her the letter and put her mind at
peace. I tell you to give it to her. Give it--now!_" Don Arturo
had said this.
Heard by an inner, unseen self, how his heart had leaped to it! For
the first time he had realized that nothing so dies with the dead as
the voice. So many things can linger and be met: a song that had
been loved, a perfume, the individuality of handwriting, a portrait
in which a smile can seem to quiver,--but the voice, that of all
things holds the magic of personality, passes utterly, can scarcely
be remembered, rarely becomes real in the dreams that in other ways
can be heart-stirring revivals of the lost. But to-night the miracle
had happened. Mystically, in every varying cadence of the once
familiar speech--warm-noted and impatient, urbane yet disdainful--the
young _marqués_ had been alive to him. In the familiar way, too, he
had obeyed him, had gone from Elsie's presence empty-handed, and with
no more personal assertiveness than a fallen leaf has in a squall.
The native melancholy of Spain intensified upon Serafin. He invited
memories,--scenes far from this garden of a Venezuelan _fonda_, and
of other times, times far back.
He was a child in the old Basque farm on a mountain top; a place of
carved beams, of balconies and overhanging roof; with cattle on the
ground floor; the first story, where the family lived and his mother
sewed, reached by an outside staircase. His mother!--strong and
fierce and true, with bared arms like a smithy's and black eyes with
the steadiness of watch fires! Sewing had been the smallest part of
her work. She had walked beside his father as a lioness beside her
mate. She had toiled with him, digging in the fields, bearing an
equal burden of the harvest; and often, alone, she had taken cattle
to market at daybreak over twenty miles of mountain road, returning
at night without a sign of fatigue on her calm, brown face. She
could not write her name, yet as he had hung about her knees, she had
told him stories, handed down by tradition, of his ancestry founded
far back amongst the ancient Libyans. And always she had spoken the
pure Basque, so proud of her race she treasured its spirit against
modern Spanish confusions and corruptions as a mother eagle with
domed wings and open beak guards her nest from attack.
One Spaniard, at least, she had violently loved,--the child she had
nursed, the foster brother she had given to her son. The difference
made by class had hardly existed between this boy and himself in
childhood during the vacations when Arturo had come on long visits to
his _ama_. What comrades they two had been!--climbing together,
fishing, giggling secretly as they knelt closely side by side during
the solemn masses they had been forced to attend, going mad with
boys' joy in the primitive dances of the mountains during the sowing
and vintage _festas_.
One memory came with such clearness of characteristic detail his soul
grew sick with a craving to go back. This showed him an autumn and
winter when Arturo was fourteen. He had not been strong for months
previous, and the _marquésa_, his mother, terrified by the cough that
had troubled her idol, had sent him away from Burgos and tutors to
the dry, fine air of his _ama's_ farm and a long playtime outdoors
with his foster brother. In the gayest way Arturo had tried to
become a Basque peasant; had worn a red _boina_ like Serafin's own
and, when frost came, a veritable mountaineer's _zamarra_--the full,
loose jacket made of curly astrachan from year-old lambs reared in
Andalusia, the black wool on the outside. But the clothes could not
make him a rustic. The rakish scarlet cap had only intensified the
exquisite chiselling of his face; nor could the bulky _zamarra_ alter
in the slightest the distinction and delicacy of his bearing.
"Beautiful as an angel," the nurse-mother had said when she saw these
for the first time on the luminous-eyed, pale boy from the city
palace that even then knew the pinch of poverty, was never heated
enough, always damp.
Serafin lifted his head a little. He did not look at the ghostly
pattern of the mountains, or the host of stars. He was still racing
with Arturo up the breeze-blown heights though the while with dual
sense he stood beside the mildewed tomb in the crypt that held his
body, a bullet in the heart.--And he saw his mother, young,
swift-moving, with sheaves of wheat heaped on her powerful shoulders,
looking like Ruth the gleaner--yet side by side with the picture, saw
her as she was now, a widow and very old, knitting before his
sister's fire, her grand-children listening as he had done to tales
of the times when to be a Basque was to be authoritative and noble,
clean and true in the fierce way of the noonday sun.
He would never see his mother again. And Arturo was dead.
Still he looked into the darkness. Suppose this life were not the
end of life? To him, an unbeliever, Arturo had spoken that night.
And yet--was this possible? If he could be sure, what a difference
this might make, what strength might come of it to him with which to
begin again--even now--and this time his fight to live be the simple
and honorable thing that his mother had tried to make a part of
him.... If he could be sure! ... He sat intensely still for hours,
waiting for a sign.
The air, heavy and warm all night, was freshening toward morning when
he became conscious of the most intense fatigue and with it a
disinclination to take one step into any sort of future. Hearts can
wear out except as machines, though bodies move normally through the
day's work. What place was there for a lonely penniless man--with a
dead heart--one who had been evil-living while recognizing in himself
many qualities that should have made for good? If he could be sure
that life--some sort of life--_something_--endured, even when
worn-out hearts had changed to ice-cold weights! His lips moved
without sound a few times. At last he spoke:
"Tell me!" he said in an imploring whisper. "Speak to me again, and
I will know,--_señor_! ..."
He waited a long while. There was only the stillness.
"Some sign!" he prayed. "If I were not made fanciful by desperation
and disappointment, and you _were_ with me to-night, come to me
again. Renew my strength. Speak to me!"
The stillness seemed to grow deeper; grew so impact he felt it press
against him as an obstacle. The first edge of what was to be
daylight showed in the east--drab, dour, hopeless. He waited until
where he sat became the ghost of a garden, the heavy-headed trees
creeping into sight as a solid black without branch filigree, the
plants a smoked-green bulk with the bars of the metal cages upon them
like flickering ribbons of silver.
A sigh went heavily through Serafin. He drew something from his
pocket.
Later--perhaps five minutes--Mateo's sparsely-haired head jolted up
from its pillow. The gloom outside the open window, faintly curdled
with a leaden tone, was full of affrighting noise--whining howls from
the jaguars, a crepitation of monkey barks and screams, a flapping of
imprisoned wings joined to frantic croakings, squawks, trills and
chirpings. Even through his sleep of sodden fatigue these animal
sounds--a _charivari_ of terror--had reached him.
"The pests have awakened me," Mateo thought, when, after hearing the
owner stirring in alarm below, he began rapidly to put some clothes
on, "but--merciful _Dios--Cristo!_--what was it that awakened them?"
He knew the reason darkly, within himself, before he joined his
half-dressed, snarling employer who carried a lantern and stepped
with him into the garden. His expectation became certainty as he
came down the path and saw the strange man still on the central
bench, still with his sloping shoulders bent, but with a stiffness
and stillness about them now that made him seem an effigy. He could
not touch him.
It was the owner who went to face the intruder, grasped his arm in
frenzy, gave the pendent head a rough push upward,--and then crossed
himself.
The animals and birds had quieted, and the hum of a heavy touring car
was heard in the distance, coming toward the _fonda_ from the
direction that would take it on to the town. Both men rushed out by
the gate and into the middle of the road. Here Mateo gave quivering
cries of distress and his master kept waving the light in a circle
about his head.
The motor, coming on at a crashing speed, was jerked to a stop a few
feet from them. It held Robert and Domingo, the _mestizo_ driving.
"_Señor!--Señor!_" the owner of the _fonda_ chattered, and then with
recognition: "Oh, _Señor_ Maury, help me in this trouble. A man has
shot himself in my garden. If this becomes known, no one will come
to my house for months. It will be a curse! I will be ruined. Help
me to settle this quietly, _señor_! You are going to the town. Will
you take me with you, so that I can get the police back with me and
move the body before the morning? Oh, señor, I am mad, mad! Twice
the fellow shot, my wife says, and all my creatures made a noise like
Hell broken loose--"
Robert had stepped out. In the lantern light and the feeble grayness
his face looked drawn and deathly. Under the peak of his cap his
eyes had lightened as he followed the man's chattering rush of words.
He wore a big yellow coat, heavy enough for winter, the collar drawn
up high, yet gave the impression of still being cold; his right hand
was thrust into one of its pockets.
"Show me the man," he said.
When he stood before Olazaba, whose head was uplifted and bent far
back just as the owner had run from it, and saw the contemptuous
weariness carved into the face, a strange change came to his own,--as
of one suddenly disarmed by Authority, chastened out of his own
burning judgment to the acceptance of a verdict including truths
whose majesty belittled conditions that but a moment before he had
felt to be so momentous.
The hand in his pocket had the thong of an old slave whip wound about
it. This curio of other days had been nailed on the wall of his room
and he had torn it down on leaving El Iris. His fingers loosened on
it; left it. They came out tremblingly and curved about his chin as
he stood, hushed, and gazed at the dead.
CHAPTER XXXIX
There was no need of Robert's continuing to Valencia. With the
finding of Olazaba in the garden of the _fonda_ his quest was ended.
He sent the tallow-faced and hastily-dressed proprietor on with
Domingo in the car to the town. It was not his intention to wait for
its return. He would walk back to El Iris.
Before starting he went into the dishevelled public room and poured
himself some brandy. Old Mateo, too distressed to stir, sat bent
forward in a corner, his mouth moving in a fumbling way, his long
arms sagging between his legs.
"You need a drink yourself," Robert said and brought him a small
glass of liquor. "Take this."
"Thank you, _señor_," he stuttered.
After gulping it down, he gained enough assurance to utter what was
in his thoughts: "I cannot go out yet, _señor_----and I do not like
to leave the body alone. He was kind to me, poor man--very kind!
Could you stay near him, _señor_, until I feel better and have
dressed? You see," he went on with an upward, sick look, "this is
not the first dead man I have seen--left out in the open. I was
through several revolutions here, _señor_, in my youth, and saw some
killing.--So I do not like to leave the body out there--alone. The
birds and insects know at once--they are not afraid--they hurry to
the dead."
A _grue_ went over Robert as he took the glass from the fingers whose
under trembling was incessant. "Don't distress yourself, Mateo.
I'll wait out there for you. Come when you are ready."
He walked with inner unwillingness to the spot. There the
repulsiveness of the thought put into his mind by the old man
deepened into a sickening sort of self-diminution. The swiftness
with which the living creature, arrogant with personality, electric
with the mysterious forces of the brain and the energies of the
blood, can become waste material with corruption imminent! The birds
in clusters were already on the lower branches, peering down and
chirping familiarly at the rigid bulk upon the bench, a lizard was
moving with a leisureliness that was horribly informing across the
dead man's knee.
Moisture stood on Robert's forehead as with his handkerchief he
flicked away the thing that was like a crawling gray tongue and
forced his fingers to draw the hat over the lifted face, a flare in
the gray. As he did this, and began smoking and pacing on the path,
he heard above him the commotion of a flight of departing birds.
It was a chilling thing to be wide awake and alone in the dawn. He
saw the hour as grim, disquieting, deeply sad; an anomalous thing,
like a body with empty veins into which at last the sun would pour as
the gift of blood. To this came the remembrance of that part of
Elsie's story whose force upon him had left a scar--this same deathly
hour on the mountain in Spain, and she there, frightened, heartsick
and astray, sent on her forlorn way with insult--cast out with
insult! ...
He paused in his pacing to look steadily at the frozen burden on the
bench. It seemed to him justice--Mosaic justice--that it was in the
dawn Olazaba had pronounced life unbearable. His hour of Calvary,
too.
After this, with blood drumming in his temples, he was flung back in
spirit to the hours just passed with Elsie. He had been a silent
listener to her story, as she had made him see into every corner of
that secret house from whose windows her spirit had for so long kept
peering out in fear. She had been brutal in truthfulness. Without
an excuse for herself she had shown one picture after another of her
life during the years separate from him. While moving in and out of
the shadows of the big room at El Iris, he for the most part sitting
with his elbows on his knees, and his hands spread above his eyes,
they had been like people between whom no veil of reticence had been
left lowered, their stark selves face to face.
With energy and exactness she had painted in words the man who had
first made her aware of the sense thirst in herself, remade her to
her own eyes. As reckless and impassioned the confession had rushed
on, this man was before her again--alive--and she called him
familiarly Arturo.
In the still room in the dead hours of the night she had shown him El
Miradero, a splash of brilliant color hanging against the wall of
drab mountain, and Arturo coming on a boyish run to meet the mule
coach, his velveteen jacket slung hussar-fashion over one
shoulder,--while without one word of self-excuse she had told how she
had loved him then. In fact, she had poured out these details in an
absorbed way as if she had no listener and were talking to herself.
As she described Arturo's unusualness in sheer beauty, his
distinction and grace, of all of which he had appeared wholly
unconscious, a memory had swept against Robert. It had been like the
brush of a curtain lifting to disclose a small incident on the day he
had sought Elsie at the Countess Longueval's tea. As he entered the
house, he had passed a young man on the steps who was leaving it. A
casual glance at him had instantly become speculative interest. The
stranger had been looking backward with a smile that had made his
dark face flash through a melancholy that was like mist upon it,--a
wonderful smile it had been, a blend of charmingly cut mobile lips
lifted challengingly, of glowing yet languid eyes; and with it he had
called back to some one a good-by in Spanish. This Spaniard, so
clearly recalled from the one meeting, was no other than Don Arturo,
Marqués de Burgos. Without speaking of the memory to Elsie, Robert
knew this had been the man.
He did not interrupt Elsie once. As she had said, she could not bear
to look at him and had progressed with her story almost without
pause, while pacing in the shadows, her head for the most part
hanging, her hands sometimes coming together and sometimes flung wide.
In and out of the pictures that she made live, the man known to him
as Olazaba had moved with subtlety and menace. She told of the storm
that had seemed rending the mountains, her loneliness and fright, her
sense of fate in the strange place, her surrender to Arturo's
pleading. He saw her, as her first step on the new path, writing the
letter of farewell. He saw Serafin receiving this from his master to
be given to Eduardo to carry down the mountain; saw her stand in
silence until the ring of the donkey's hoofs from the stony road had
made her sure that he had gone,--and with him her old life.
Of the murder she said little. A few shuddering phrases were enough
to show him herself, an alien, understanding little of the storm of
words between her lover and the man who had come to make him
pay,--then the demolition of her world. And after the shock, the
grief. Here, too, she had almost no words.
And the sequel to El Miradero: Julie's home in Paris where Elsie had
crept back to consider the fading negative of her future; the war
that had made her one of the demented crowds speeding homeward; the
lie to him in New York made possible by opportunity. He saw all this.
"I did not deceive you in New York about the letter in order to make
life easy for myself," she had said with a straight sort of
simplicity and without force. "I was not as cheap as that. I came
away with you to accomplish just one thing--to get the letter and so
keep you from pain and shock that had become needless. I did not
love you then, I thought I never would. Once I had the letter, I
meant to go away, making the terms of our agreement the excuse. My
inner life here was hideous--oh, one long dread! No wonder Selena
suspected me. I lived in security only from hour to hour. I hated
the day. All the day I would feel myself a hypocrite, goaded by the
fear that by some chance outside my control the letter would reach
you, that at any moment I might see it come into your hands, see you
open it, and have to endure your--well, perhaps your contempt. I
loved the nights--there was no danger in the nights. With the first
rays of morning through the slits of the shutters, my torture began
again--constant, unrelenting apprehension!"
There had been a long pause after this.
"Although I made this struggle to keep you from ever knowing how I
had given you up, I did not think that I loved you at all in those
first months. I kept dreaming of Arturo. Life was a cloud and I
moved in it, seeing him. He had worn a beautiful, ancient ring with
his family's crest on it--it had sealed my letter to you. Afterward
he gave it to me as a pledge, and until one day last February I wore
it inside my dress.--A revelation about him reached me then--all
about his sort of life and why he was killed. It came in a newspaper
account that my mother sent. It changed me!"
In a few phrases she had given him the story of Ascuncion with the
corroding knowledge it had brought of Arturo.
"And I saw that instead of having been the one woman to him, loved
deeply, I had only been one in a procession of women."
There was a frozen sort of stillness. She broke it with a low yet
piercing question: "There isn't any need for the rest--is there?"
Before he could look up or answer she had continued: "I'm different
to you, forever. That's only what I can expect.--Well, I thought
that after all these months the letter had been lost in some way. I
told myself this every day. At last I felt absolutely sure of
it.--And then to-night--when I looked into Olazaba's face--a
stranger's face--I was looking at Serafin.... I almost died.... He
showed me the letter before dinner. He threatened to hand it to you
at once unless I kept quiet about him and gave him a chance to
explain.... The chance came when you went to the Morenos.... He
said then that unless I kept silent about having known him in Europe
in the way I did and would let him go to New York with us to be
introduced by you to your business people, he would hand you the
letter while saying that in Paris I had been--the mistress of the
_marqués_--though he must have known, from having to cheat me to get
me alone at El Miradero with his master, that this was a lie!--Well,
I refused--and felt that nothing would save me--that you would read
the letter I had come to hate, _before_ I could tell you all this in
my own way, as I meant surely to do..."
Her voice had trailed off here, had become thin and wondering: "It
was a strange experience. I will never understand it--suddenly he
gave me the letter and rushed out. He _gave_ it," she said in a
thrilling sort of whisper. "What I had prayed for so hopelessly
was--mine."
Robert recalled that after this his consciousness had suddenly
concentrated upon one picture. With it, the entrance into him of a
longing at white heat was like that of an animal with claws, seizing
only the memory of Elsie's hours at El Miradero after the murder,
where Olazaba with the letter secretly in his possession had put the
consummate edge to her pain. When to this was added thought of him
as a buzzard who having long ago prepared his chance had come
to-night to take advantage of it, the whole made an offense so beyond
the pale of the most ordinary decency, it had swept him to his
feet--wild--compelled to one sort of action.
How he had gone from Elsie with only a blurted phrase that he would
soon be back, and how he had left the house with Domingo, he did not
remember clearly. The rage to kill was upon him and he hurried to
satisfy it. The obsession had been frightful. And yet--! As he
walked the path before Olazaba's dead body, a new knowledge of
himself grew as he realized the care with which his mind had kept him
from a crime; how reason, lucid and cold through all his turmoil, had
made him leave his pistol behind him, and instead had put into his
hand the slave whip. To wound and hurt, to abase this man that he
had suddenly come to loathe with a fury he had not dreamed possible
to his nature, to make him cringe on the ground with cries of pain as
victims had often done under this lash, whose history as he knew had
been a frightful one,--this had promised primitive satisfaction side
by side with an under determination not to wreck himself for the
creature he held in contempt.
And even what he had planned had been needless. His hands were empty
and his soul lightened.
There was a look of age on Robert's face. A transient blight from
the years ahead had picked out hollows in his cheeks, given his eyes
emptiness with the bright weariness that comes of lack of sleep. And
now, on the leap of a second, remembrance of Elsie began to prod him.
He wanted Mateo to appear so that he could start for El Iris and
finish with her. Finish?-- The word was a crooked pull upon his
nerves. Finish? ... How--since he had not previsaged at all in what
words he would meet the issue in their lives?
From the time he had left home his rage against Olazaba had blurred
everything else. When he tried to realize that but for a fortuitous
tragedy Elsie would have left him for another man and without ever
another sight of him, he could not make himself know it. He could
not even become familiar with it in trying to know it. The thought
was in him, stupidly, rubbed in with the most intense sadness and
with the shudder that goes into a look back at some mortal danger
barely escaped. And yet--how could it be true?
He was only a few yards from Olazaba's body, and at the top of the
path in view of the gate that in the excitement of his entrance had
been left open. He was standing with the look of a jaded man, his
back to a tree, his chin buried in the high coat collar, his eyes on
the ground. While he waited so for Mateo the dull drumming of the
one thought did not stop in his aching brain: It was true. He knew
it was true. He must get used to it. Once he could grasp himself as
the man, Elsie the woman, in the group of pictures melting one into
the other before memory, the matter would simplify and he could deal
with it sanely,--oh, very sanely and generously. He knew he would do
this when he could really take it in as the truth that he knew it was.
The rush of a light car past the open garden gate in the direction of
Valencia made him look up, too late to see it. And then, his aroused
attention drawn to another descent of the audacious birds to points
near the bench with the body, he returned to it with a deliberately
disturbing trudge that brought alarmed chirps and a fluttering
retreat.
From this he went on in the direction he faced until the house was
reached, its door flung back. And here he called for Mateo.
The old man's voice came feebly and desolately in answer: "I cannot
go yet, _señor_--the _señora_ is much upset and needs me here.
_Ay-é! Dios_-- But please do not wait any longer. The others will
come soon now."
"Very good. Then I will go," Robert called.
He turned from the house to see Elsie, not twenty yards from him.
With Candida beside her she was almost directly in front of Olazaba's
body.
CHAPTER XL
She was different from the memory he had of her where she moved
nervously at one side of the ineffectively lighted room and in the
severe gown she had put on for traveling. An unfamiliar cloak of
cobweb gray and a black mantilla brought almost an alien impression
with which the pallid light, the fantastic garden and the look on her
face were rightfully a part. Most of all her face,--so bloodless it
was more ashen than white, her mouth open in a look of sickness. The
first glance showed him that but for Candida's arms about her she
would have sunk to her knees.
As he hurried to her, her gaze seemed to seize him, left it to move
stiffly to Olazaba's copper-hued left hand lying palm upward on his
knee with the curved fingers open and more than ever like claws in
their rigor, then back again to him.
"_You--?_" quivered on a breath as he reached her, the most deadly
fear in it.
"No, my dear, no," Robert said and took her from Candida, feeling the
upheaving shudder from her body dart through his own. "He shot
himself. He was here--alone."
In the relief her head sank against him, the eyes closed as if she
had fallen suddenly into sleep. He led her down a path out of sight
of the body to a bench there, and sat beside her. She was watching
him now; waiting.
"I was passing in the car, going to find Olazaba in Valencia," Robert
said in answer to the look, "when the man who owns this place called
me in from the road to help. I found Olazaba as you saw him.--You
are sick with fright!"
"Oh, yes! When I was told that you'd gone," she stuttered, "I went
to your room and looked for your pistol. I couldn't find it--and
so--I thought--!--Oh, I couldn't bear what I thought--it made me
insane. I had to come out, follow you, try to find you in time--I
was terrified!"
"I'm sorry. I should have gone to you before I left and told you
that I was taking only that old whip that was on my wall."
As she fumblingly lifted her handkerchief, he took it from her and
with careful touches wiped her face that had the look of marble
sweating.
"Don't be frightened," he urged. "There's nothing to fear. You
understand?--there's nothing to connect me--us--with this at all. I
was passing, called in, and recognized the suicide as an
acquaintance. That's all. It's finished." He looked at his watch
and stood up. "You came in your car?"
"Yes."
"We'll go back now. The police will be here in a few moments. I'd
rather they didn't see you. I'll drive you home. Candida can walk.
No one need know you came here with her. Come, Elsie."
Robert had done these things in a comforting way, said these words in
tones that were deeply kind. This quality reached through Elsie's
numbness, made its impression on her,--his _kindness_.
During the almost silent return to the house and to her bedroom,
where he lighted a heap of dry bark on the hearth, she was still
quietly, resignedly aware of his compassionate consideration. She
had sense of nothing but this from him. Nothing less nor more. She
acknowledged it as she sat before the blaze, her chilled hands held
out to it.
"You are very kind," she said in a soft, drifting way and without
looking at him.
Robert winced from the word. It set the situation between them
jangling like a damaged clock trying to strike. The need of decision
came throbbing out of the confusion in him. Still, knowing this, a
longing persisted to postpone any further consideration of their new
attitude. It was the weariness of a man recovering from sickness to
whom the thought of resumption of initiative is dreary.
He bent over Elsie, smoothed her hair. "Will you try to sleep now?"
As instead of replying, her face went down into her open hands, he
spoke again persuasively: "We are both so tired. After a rest we
can--"
She shook her head, lifted it sharply and turned sideways to look up
at him. "I want to say one thing to you first. One thing must be
settled before there's any rest for me." She pointed to a chair
facing her.
Robert sat down willingly but with a sensation as if his heart were
only half alive. He had a desire to speak, without clear knowledge
of how to begin; a consciousness of the something vital needing to be
said that yet kept slipping from him and that his lassitude shirked
from following. Elsie, instead, had become suddenly vibrant.
Childish in look and air, weak and pale, a purpose had appeared in
her that was like the electric spark he had often seen run along
exposed wires.
The instant's silence between them had the weightiness that precedes
the passing of a sentence. The house was absolutely still, filled
with a great loneliness. From the _patio_ the early morning glamour
came; it was changing to a tawny glitter on the red roofs, to gold
glints in the trees, and seemed a fresh-faced, inquisitive new-comer
looking in at them.
"I want to get away, Robert," Elsie said, her voice hard, yet with a
quiver through it. "I don't want to wait to go home with you. I
want to be by myself--go to-morrow."
He frowned moodily, as if trying to take in her words.
"It's the only thing possible. I don't want to stay here--not for
another day!"
"Why not?" This was honest, dull wonder.
"Can't--that's all."
She stood up, went to the window and looked out. After a silence she
turned, remaining standing with her back to the light.
"This is a trouble," she said passionately, "where all the blame
rests on one--on me. I can't endure the weight of it--and be with
you."
"This is foolish, Elsie," he said very wistfully, though still in the
voice that told of his tired heart. "Your place is with me. I want
you with me."
A flash of misery went over her face. "I know. You are thinking of
what the doctor told you. You are being--merciful--to a woman you no
longer care about." At his startled look and attempt to speak she
made a desperate gesture with her clasped hands, silencing him.
"This is what I felt sure would happen if you ever found out about El
Miradero--what I had meant to do. I would become _different_--as I
have. You can't help this. You think that in the first place I
proved I was the wrong sort of woman--one of the fools weak and
unmoral who are useless, just cumber the earth--the sort that by your
nature is offensive to you. And all the contemptible things that had
to go into my struggle to keep what I had done a secret from
you--these, too, you detest. You are that sort of man."
She came a little nearer to him, her head bent back, her drooped eyes
studying him, and he saw the same twilight sort of sadness about her
that had been there during the first months of their life at El Iris.
It was clear that her calm edged wild tears, and though the torpor
within him was relaxing, the nerves that had seemed sucked dry
beginning to quicken again, he let her pour out the thoughts choking
her. An instinct came to him that through Elsie's vision he might
come clearly to see his own.
She misinterpreted his look of waiting. She had expected to fight
some opposition from him because of the impassioned fatherhood that
was in his feeling for her. She had been wrong. He would easily let
her slip away.
A freakish memory assailed her of frocks that in the past had been
spoiled; not those whose stains had easily been washed out and rents
mended,--but others that from unexpected nails protruding, or sudden
fire, had gone beyond reconstruction. The future with Robert
appeared much like those burned and torn little frocks, jaggedly
uneven and charred beyond remedy.
"I can tell that you are ready to make what excuse you can for me,"
she said, her lips cinder-dry. "I know you pity me, and I don't want
pity. You forgive me. That helps me, but it isn't what I want. I
can never have what I want any more. I know this, and I've accepted
it.--I'll telegraph my mother," she added with decision. "She can
meet me."
"And after that?" Robert asked, almost, it seemed to her, in the tone
of a bystander. His chin was resting on his clasped hands, his eyes
lowered.
"I don't know. We--can see." She paused and spoke more decidedly.
"This has really changed everything. Don't let us keep making the
best of a failure! Somehow I could manage to set you free."
He looked up at her then, a restrained though violent look. It
rested on her for a long pause, took in her fragility that had
likeness to a lamp, luminous from a flame within; her desperate
desire to be self-sufficient; her ineffectualness. The deadness went
out of him, his sinews hardened. He stood up, went straight to her
and took her into his arms.
"How could you set me free?" he asked.
She held back from him. "I could--if you couldn't care for me.
Don't be sorry for me! See what's right for yourself!"
"But I love you," said Robert simply.
"Don't--lie!" she begged and still drew away from him.
"I love you, and you couldn't set me free. You might leave me, and I
might never see you again. And you would always be with me--a
thirst." He held her to him frantically, bent her head back and
kissed her on the mouth, long, enervating kisses. "I not only
cherish you with sweetness," he said, his tone wrung, "as my wife who
is to give me a child--I am on fire with love for you!"
She had no words then; could only keep looking into his eyes with
their burning and tenderness.
"Life without you? As you spoke I saw it--parched, famished,
dreadful. Now listen to me.--I lost you once. I lost your love when
you were in Paris because I hadn't known how to keep it. But tell
me--from your soul--one thing: If you had loved me then as you have
these months here--could you have forgotten me?" His lips were close
to hers again. "Could you?"
"Robert--" she faltered. Her eyes were wild and soft, her slender
arms around his neck, as she held to him, had a cable's strength.
"Oh, Robert--no!"
"The blame is mine," he said.
"You trusted me," Elsie found strength to say with self-reproach.
"You trusted me so absolutely!"
"To the trust of a man there should always be added the pull on a
woman's heart-strings. I was as far from your heart as I was from
your life."
"But I should have told you--I should have been frank with you before
I went back to you, Robert. I tried to--and I couldn't. I have
lived with you here--thinking of this secret all the time."
"Perfect frankness is a lovely thing because it's brave. Still, I've
never thought confession always necessary. Often it's a mistake. I
understand how you shrank from it and felt that your sincerity for
what lay ahead of us justified you in hiding it in your own self."
As with deepening consciousness of her charm for him and his need of
her, he again flooded her with caresses, he kept whispering with a
sort of anguish: "My loved one--my very breath! Oh, Elsie, without
you?--Dearest!"
She drew him back to the chair, made him sit down and knelt beside
him. For a little while she remained with her elbows on his knees,
looking into his eyes whose heaviness had been replaced by a glitter
like that from the sea.
"Well?" he asked. The something so young in him laughed out.
"What's put a tuck in your forehead now? What's bothering you?"
"It's--the letter." She looked anxiously at him.
He frowned with a remembering look and drew it from the pocket of his
dinner coat. "I forgot that I had it," and he put it into her hand.
"Burn it."
Reminiscence, a shadow, had fallen on Elsie's face as she studied the
writing on the gray-blue envelope. When she looked up, still leaning
against Robert, she searched his eyes, her own limpid, honest.
"I want to be so _square_ with you," she cried, almost an angry
enthusiasm sweeping over her. "I'm wondering if you quite realize
that if you'd read this you'd have believed I'd been really
unfaithful--that it was Fate that changed all--no credit to me?" The
words were hurting her, she had to force them from her lips.
"Robert, if Arturo had not been killed I'd have been with him now.
Or if not--" and she looked past him with a desolate wideness of
gaze, "and I'd left him, where would I have drifted?--what would I
have been to-day? ... How often of late I've asked myself that! The
intention--the whole thing I planned to do--that's what really
matters. I know enough about the logic of men to be sure that back
of all you've said, you think that."
Robert had kept urgent hold of her hands with the letter pressed
between them as she spoke, while his face grew deeply thoughtful.
"If you knew men better," he said quietly, "you'd know we are utterly
illogical, perhaps fools, about one thing--the physical sacredness of
the _one_ woman.--And there's something else: Have you ever thought
of the potency of--memory? Had chance not lifted you out of the
danger you were in, what soiling memories you'd have now. What we
are emotionally depends so much upon the life of our minds. So I say
to you--thank God that you were kept from what would have been
degradation--that there's no memory of it burned into you."
They remained quiet a moment after this. A glowing silence.
When Elsie's voice stole through it, Robert felt it the most moving
thing he had ever heard: "I can bear to have you read it now," and
she forced the paper into his hold.
He made an almost angry movement as if to tear it. She clung to his
hand.
"Think how I tried to keep it from reaching you, how I'd seem to die
at the thought of your seeing these words. And now--! Oh, isn't it
wonderful not to care?--to feel so sure?"
His look was still unwilling. "This thing has scourged you enough--"
"But it will satisfy me to have you know everything about me, as I
know myself!--The perfect frankness that is brave!"
"Well--if you want it so much," he said amiably.
Elsie half turned away, her cheek against his arm. She heard him
open the envelope, heard a slurring sound as he drew out the
enclosure. There was a rustle of paper. Silence. The incongruous
thing following made her doubt the wisdom of having forced him to
read what she hated--he had given a breathless exclamation of
amazement, and it seemed to jerk her to face him.
"Nothing!" he said in hushed excitement. "Look--nothing at all!
It's blank paper!"
He was holding the letter toward her. She tried to take it. Her
hand dropped, her gaze as empty as the sheet spread out--for it was
empty--no mark on it except the engraved El Miradero at the top.
Robert had begun to scrutinize the envelope. "Olazaba--! Did he
open it--change it? Did he play this in his game as a gold brick,
with the original safe in his possession?" He stood up, his look
changed. "Why didn't I search his body? I had the chance. And I
thought of it--I was too decent. The letter may be found on him!"
Elsie had stood up too. She had drawn the envelope from Robert's
hand. A still look of uncanny knowledge was spreading slowly in her
face.
"Isn't this absolutely unbroken?" she asked, and pointed to the seal.
"Yes. But the original wax might have been picked off and a fresh
splash put over the spot."
She shook her head slowly. "Impossible!" When after a pause she
spoke again, an odd deadness had come to her voice. "There was only
one ring on earth that could have put that crest there, and I had it.
Olazaba thought this held my letter to you. It never did. It was
changed--in the very beginning."
The room where she stood faded for Elsie, and Robert with it. She
was back in El Miradero. She had given her unsealed letter to Arturo
and had asked him to read it. He had refused; had turned away from
her to bend over the high-backed desk as he had appeared only to seal
and stamp it. He had faced her again, the letter ready in his
hand--and this empty sheet was in the envelope in place of her own!
She heard his words: "Think--are you sure you wish to send it?
Wouldn't later do?"
And when she knew Serafin was coming for it, her reply: "Oh, maybe I
ought to say something more in it.-- Send word for Eduardo to wait.
I could say--"
How full of meaning now was his remembered answer: "No! Send it--or
destroy it. Shall I fling it in the fire?"
Ah, she might send it as it was! Or she might burn it as it was!
_She might not open it_.
Her mind worked so alertly, speculation as to the fate of the pages
that had been so nimbly stolen charged through it. Had Serafin the
real letter, after all? Had he come upon it among Arturo's papers
after his death? The answer overlapped the thought--No! Serafin had
not found it, for Arturo had burned it when he had thrown what he had
called his old love letters on the last flare of the fire,--and he
had thrown them on only that he might destroy the one he feared. In
the hour that had been supreme and magical to her, he had been
cautious, circumspect.
As she relived this scene, she told it in patches, and trembling, sat
down again. Her shoulders were bent. She had thought she knew
humiliation at its heaviest on the day she read of Ascuncion and had
come to see back of Arturo's gentleness and gravity a sort of
self-sanctioned license to passionate lawlessness and double-dealing
with women. Even that had held something of strength, something
ruthlessly primitive. His precisely careful cheating of her when
their happiness had seemed at its loveliest was--cheap. She could
not look at her husband.
The subsiding crackle of the fire put an edge on the stillness that
hung for moments. And then Robert said her name.
"Don't feel so badly," he went on. "You shine by contrast. Don't
you see that? Poor Elsie--you were in bad hands that night! The
master tricked you so that when time for payment came there would be
nothing in black and white against him. And the servant tricked you,
if only from a bargain hunting sense to have an advantage of you that
might some day be of some sort of value to him."
She heard him turn away and lifted her head. Wistfulness replaced
the darkness of self-repugnance as she watched him throw the blank
paper and its envelope into the fire, press them down with his boot
heel until the flame had made ashes of them.
"There!" he said, and turning, drew her up. A hand vigorously on
each of her shoulders, he gave her a hardy shake. His familiar
smile, where drollery showed subtly though his lips scarcely moved,
considered her. "That's over. No, my dear--it never was. Like the
letter that haunted you, tortured you--nothing--nothing at all!--And
here's Candida with coffee--God bless her."
He opened the gallery doors and the smiling girl, carrying a big
tray, came through them, the blue-pink luster of the morning in its
full glory behind her.
THE END
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